Question

I have a method which takes a List<?> as an argument.

public static String method(List<?> arg){
     // Do something based on type of the list
}

//I call the method as below
List<ClassA> listA = new ArrayList<ClassA>();
List<ClassB> listB = new ArrayList<ClassB>();
method(listA);
method(listB);

In method, how do I know if arg is a List of ClassA or a List of ClassB?

Answer 1

From an answer by the user called Romain ” If you use < ?>, you mean you aren’t going to use the parametrized type anywhere. Either go to the specific type (in your case it seems List< String>) or to the very generic List< Object> “

Also, I believe that if you use the question mark the compiler wont catch type mismatches until runtime (reified; p.119 of Effective Java), bypassing erasure, and effectively elimating the benefit you get from using generic types???

TO answer the question of the questioner: if you use List< Object> and then try to cast it to A or to B , possibly using instanceOf , that might be a way to tell what it is. I bet there is a better way to do it than that though.