Question

I have a class Element which extends Node.
I would like to declare a List<> which should work like:

List<Node> elementsList;
for( Element e : (List<Element>) elementsList ) {
}

What kind of generic type should I use?

Answer 1

Declare it as a List<Element>.

If Bar extends Foo, you cannot safely cast a List<Foo> to a List<Bar>.

---

Alternately (NOT RECOMMENDED!):

List<Node> elementsList;

for (Node n : elementsList)
{
    Element e = (Element) n;
    // ...
}

but at that rate you might as well not use generics at all.