Overloading of Generic methods
April 7, 2005 Leave a comment
The draft Java Language Specification has this to say about Overloading.
8.4.9 Overloading
When a method is invoked, the number of actual arguments (and any
explicit type arguments) and the compile-time types of the arguments are used, at
compile time, to determine the signature of the method that will be invoked.
The difference here is the extra rule within braces.
This is the JLS second edition.
When a method is invoked, the number of actual arguments and the compile-time types of the arguments are used, at compile time, to determine the signature of the method that will be invoked.
Now code written using JDK 5.0 relies on the type arguments to determine the correct method even if we have two methods with the same name and no parameters like the following code.
public class Overloading {
public static <A extends String> A test() {
System.out.println(“String”);
return null;
}
public static <B extends Integer> B test() {
System.out.println(“Number”);
return null;
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
Overloading.<Integer>test();
Overloading.<String>test();
}
}