Quick question about generics

[shaboinkin]

My professor sent us some code that he used to create a node. We then need to create a tester for it and I'm trying to understand one line he gave us.

class Node<E extends Comparable<E>>

Could someone tell me what is going on here? I looked up Comparable on the api but I'm still somewhat fuzzy on why it's used here.


Thanks
-shaboinkin

[Fubarable]

This means that when you declare a Node variable and when you initialize a Node object, it must use a generic type that extends Comparable. So if you have two classes, Foo and Bar like so:

public class Foo implements Comparable<Foo> {
  
  public int compareTo(foo otherFoo) {
     /// etc...
  }
  
}

public class Bar {

}

You can use Foo as the generic Type of your Node variable/object but not Bar since Bar does not implement Comparable<Bar>. So this is OK:

Note<Foo> myNode = new Node<Foo>();

but this won't compile:

Note<Bar> myNode = new Node<Bar>();

[pbrockway2]

I'm guessing the node is part of some ordered structure like a tree. A binary tree might organise its nodes so that the left child was "less than" the right child, thereby keeping all the nodes in a way that can be iterated over easily.

But this depends on the node's data being of a particular type: they must be things that implement Comparable, ie have a compareTo() method. For example Strings are like this.

public final class String
extends Object
implements Serializable, Comparable<String>, CharSequence

Other classes are not comparable like this. (For instance StringBuilder doesn't define any way to compare one instance with another.)

So a structure that wants to take advantage of the "self comparability" of the data stored in the nodes can be built for String instances, but not for StringBuilder instances. And that is what the declaration is expressing:

class Node<E extends Comparable<E>>

"A Node of Elements that implement the comparable interface with respect to themselves". Note "extends" is used here although both implementing and extending some super type are allowed.

See also Bounded Type Parameters in Oracle's Tutorial.

[shaboinkin]

Ohhhh OK

Thanks a bunch, got my stuff working now.