Question

In Java 1.4.2, class java.math.BigInteger implements interfaces Comparable, Serializable.

In Java 1.5.0, class java.math.BigInteger implements interfaces Serializable, Comparable<BigInteger>.

This is just an example to help me ask about < and >. What I am really wondering about is the < and > stuff.

My question is threefold:

• what does the <BigInteger> part of the implements statement mean?
• what is that syntax called?
• and what does it do?

P.S.: It’s really hard to google for < and > and impossible to search SO for < and > in the first place.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Read the Java Generics Tutorial. The thing between the angle brackets is a type parameter – Comparable is a generic class, and in this case the angle brackets mean that the class is comparable to other BigIntegers.

For a little more clarification in this case, have a look at the Javadocs for Comparable in 1.5. Note that it is declared as Comparable<T>, and that the compareTo method takes an argument of type T. The T is a type parameter that is ‘filled in’ when the interface is used. Thus in this case, declaring you implement Comparable<BigInteger> implies that you must have a compareTo(BigInteger o) method. Another class might implement Comparable<String> meaning that it would have to implement a compareTo(String o) method.

Hopefully you can see the benefit from the above snippet. In 1.4, the signature of compareTo could only ever take an Object since all kinds of classes implemented Comparable and there was no way to know exactly what was needed. With generics, however, you can specify that you are comparable with respect to a particular class, and then write a more specific compareTo method that only takes that class as a parameter.

The benefits here are two-fold. Firstly, you don’t need to do an instanceof check and a cast in your method’s implementation. Secondly, the compiler can do a lot more type checking at compile time – you can’t accidentally pass a String into something that implements Comparable<BigInteger>, since the types don’t match. It’s much better for the compiler to be able to point this out to you, rather than have this cause a runtime exception as would have generally happened in non-generic code.