Make a Java class generic, but only for two or three types

Question

(I was astonished not to be able to find this question already on stackoverflow, which I can only put down to poor googling on my part, by all means point out the duplicate.

Answer 1

An alternative would be to just accept the fact that you have no control over the type hierarchy of String/Integer and create an interface to give a common type for the classes you do have control over

public int reverse(int value) {
    return Integer.valueOf(new StringBuilder(value + "").reverse()
            .toString());
}

public String reverse(String value) {
    return new StringBuilder(value + "").reverse().toString();
}

public  T reverse(T value) {
    value.reverse();
    return value;
}

public interface Reversible {
    public void reverse();
}