Extending a enum with enum's type

[Mandar Joshi]

Hi,

I was reading the javadocs of TimeUnit class and i am perplexed as to what design benefits we get from extending the enum class with a class that is generic type of enum like below :

java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit extends java.lang.Enum<TimeUnit>

Thanks,
Mandar

[Christophe Verré]

All enum classes implicitly extend the Enum class. The Enum class signature is : Class Enum<E extends Enum<E>>. When you declare an enum class like "public enum TimeUnit", it implicitly becomes "public enum TimeUnit extends Enum<TimeUnit>". This is discribed here : The direct superclass of an enum type named E is Enum<E>.