Problem when creating a list with generics.

[Buddhika Mawella]

Hi falks,
Please note that there is a class called Dog that extends another class Called Animal.
if I create a ArrayList as below, That shows a compilation error at line 2. What is the reason for that?

		List<? extends Animal> list = new ArrayList<Dog>();
		list.add(new Dog);

Thanks.

[Pramod P Deore]

what if suppose you are working on big project and someone put Horse object inside this list then? because he knows Horse extends Animal (suppose class Horse extends from Animal ). Generics is use for compile time protection. And you may think that you have a list which contains only dog.

[Buddhika Mawella]

That means just after I assigning my list of dogs to List<? extends Animal> list,
That list becomes read only. I mean we cant add Dogs,Horse or Animals into list. Am I correct?

[Rob Spoor]

You can still add null, but nothing else.

[Buddhika Mawella]

But still I feels like its unfair. Because when I am creating my list I am initializing it as, new ArrayList<Dog>(); which says I am creating an array list that can hold Dog objects.Then why cant I add Dog objects?

[Hauke Ingmar Schmidt]

Buddhika Mawella wrote:But still I feels like its unfair. Because when I am creating my list I am initializing it as, new ArrayList<Dog>(); which says I am creating an array list that can hold Dog objects.Then why cant I add Dog objects?

Because your variable does not tell this. The type check is done on the type of the variable, not the type of the object. If you don't tell the compiler that you hold a list of dogs, it doesn't know this.

[Buddhika Mawella]

Okay, thanks mate.