Higher-kinded generics in Java

by

I think what you’re trying to do is simply not supported by Java generics. The simpler case of

public class Foo<T> {
    public T<String> bar() { return null; }
}

also does not compile using javac.

Since Java does not know at compile-time what T is, it can’t guarantee that T<String> is at all meaningful. For example if you created a Foo<BufferedImage>, bar would have the signature

public BufferedImage<String> bar()

which is nonsensical. Since there is no mechanism to force you to only instantiate Foos with generic Ts, it refuses to compile.

Leave a Comment

tech