Generics :

May 11, 2011

Generics allow us to have type or method which can operate on objects of various types, while providing type safety at the compile time.
That means if you define generics class object of type Integer & you are trying to add different type of variable to generic class like String then it will give compile time error.
In another sense, if we try to add different types in same list like string and int in a same list then compile time error will be thrown.
Generics are available under the namespace System.Collections.Generic.
The concept of type parameters is introduce to the .NET Framework with the help of Generics, which makes it possible to design classes & methods which defer the specification of one or more types until that class or method is declared and instantiated by the client code.


        public class MyGenericClass
        {
            void Add(T val) { }
        }
        //Define a class which will consume MyGenericClass
        class MyGenericClass
        {
            static void Main()
            {
                // Declare a generic list having int as type 
                MyGenericClass myGenericClassObj1 = new MyGenericClass();
                // Declare a generic list of having string as type  
                MyGenericClass myGenericClassObj2 = new MyGenericClass();
            }
        }

Advantages:

Generics provide feature of Type Safety & it's performance is faster.
Generics can be used to create your own class of collection.
Using generic we can create your own generic methods, interfaces, classes, delegates and events.

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