What is the concept of erasure in generics in Java?

Question

What is the concept of erasure in generics in Java?

Answer 1

There are good explanations. I only add an example to show how the type erasure work with a decompiler.

Original class,

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;


public class S {

    T obj; 

    S(T o) {
        obj = o;
    }

    T getob() {
        return obj;
    }

    public static void main(String args[]) {
        List list = new ArrayList<>();
        list.add("Hello");

        // for-each
        for(String s : list) {
            String temp = s;
            System.out.println(temp);
        }

        // stream
        list.forEach(System.out::println);
    }
}

Decompiled code from its bytecode,

import java.io.PrintStream;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.Objects;
import java.util.function.Consumer;

public class S {

   Object obj;


   S(Object var1) {
      this.obj = var1;
   }

   Object getob() {
      return this.obj;
   }

   public static void main(String[] var0) {

   ArrayList var1 = new ArrayList();
   var1.add("Hello");


   // for-each
   Iterator iterator = var1.iterator();

   while (iterator.hasNext()) {
         String string;
         String string2 = string = (String)iterator.next();
         System.out.println(string2);
   }


   // stream
   PrintStream printStream = System.out;
   Objects.requireNonNull(printStream);
   var1.forEach(printStream::println);


   }
}