Question

I’m strictly looking for a language conversion here of this:

List<?>

I already have a work around I’m just surprised that I can’t find the vb.net equivalent of a variable type of a “raw” generic list that takes a wild card.
Java’s mechanism here enables you to reference a list regardless of what T is.
Java even enables you to go further and do things like:

List<? extends Number>
List<? super Double>

I tried:

List(Of )

and that did not work. That only seems to work inside the GetType function.

Answer 1

See Generic Types in Visual Basic (Visual Basic) on MSDN. What you’re looking for is called a Type Constraint. You’ll have to combine that with a declaration on a method or class that performs the restriction that you want.

To accept any type you can do:

Public Sub testSub(Of t)(arg As List(Of t))
    'Do something.
End Sub

Or to restrict it, for example, to a value type, you can do:

Public Sub testSub(Of t As Structure)(arg As List(Of t))
    'Do something.
End Sub

What you’re looking for is a purely generic property which isn’t allowed in the .Net Framework. The code below will not compile.

Public Property testSub(Of t) As List(Of t)
    Get
    End Get
    Set
    End Set
End Property 

The closest you can get is:

Public Class testClass(Of T)
    Public Property testSub As List(Of t)
        Get
        End Get
        Set
        End Set
    End Property 
End Class