Introduced in J2SE 5.0, this long-awaited enhancement to the type system allows a type or method to operate on objects of various types while providing compile-time type safety. It adds compile-time type safety to the Collections Framework and eliminates the drudgery of casting.
Note: This lesson covers a language feature introduced in the latest release of the JavaTM 2 Platform Standard Edition version 5.0. Visit the J2SE 5.0 download page.