generics - duplicate method declaration

[Asha Venkata]

Hello,

Can someone please explain why the Java compiler considers the following to be duplicate definition of the method foo():

public void foo (List<String> x) {}
public void foo (List<Integer> x) {}

Thanks
Asha

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Hi,

Welcome to JavaRanch!

Java generics work by erasure, meaning that they're largely a compile-time abstraction. At runtime, all reference to the type parameter is removed -- which means these two methods are identical.