Just Java™ 2

Bounds—Requiring a Type Parameter to Implement an Interface or Extend a Parent Class

You'll get more use out of generic types if there's a way to call additional methods on them, more than just the handful of methods implemented in java.lang.Object. You can call a specific method, such as compareTo(), on a generic type within the body of a generic class, if you can be sure that the type has such a method. There are two ways to ensure that some class has a given method:

• Make the class a child of some parent that has the method, or

• Make the class implement an interface that has the method.

In general terms, we want a way to tell a generic that one of the parameter types must implement some interface or extend some parent. We express this ...