When to use generic methods and when to use wild-card?

There are certain places, where wildcards, and type parameters do the same thing. But there are also certain places, where you have to use type parameters.

1. If you want to enforce some relationship on the different types of method arguments, you can't do that with wildcards, you have to use type parameters.

Taking your method as example, suppose you want to ensure that the src and dest list passed to copy() method should be of same parameterized type, you can do it with type parameters like so:

public static <T extends Number> void copy(List<T> dest, List<T> src)

Here, you are ensured that both dest and src have same parameterized type for List. So, it's safe to copy elements from src to dest.

But, if you go on to change the method to use wildcard:

public static void copy(List<? extends Number> dest, List<? extends Number> src)

it won't work as expected. In 2nd case, you can pass List<Integer> and List<Float> as dest and src. So, moving elements from src to dest wouldn't be type safe anymore. If you don't need such kind of relation, then you are free not to use type parameters at all.

Some other difference between using wildcards and type parameters are:

• If you have only one parameterized type argument, then you can use wildcard, although type parameter will also work.
• Type parameters support multiple bounds, wildcards don't.

• Wildcards support both upper and lower bounds, type parameters just support upper bounds. So, if you want to define a method that takes a List of type Integer or it's super class, you can do:

  public void print(List<? super Integer> list)  // OK
  

  but you can't use type parameter:

   public <T super Integer> void print(List<T> list)  // Won't compile
  

References:

• Angelika Langer's Java Generics FAQs

Consider following example from The Java Programming by James Gosling 4th edition below where we want to merge 2 SinglyLinkQueue:

public static <T1, T2 extends T1> void merge(SinglyLinkQueue<T1> d, SinglyLinkQueue<T2> s){
    // merge s element into d
}

public static <T> void merge(SinglyLinkQueue<T> d, SinglyLinkQueue<? extends T> s){
        // merge s element into d
}

Both of the above methods have the same functionality. So which is preferable? Answer is 2nd one. In the author's own words :

"The general rule is to use wildcards when you can because code with wildcards is generally more readable than code with multiple type parameters. When deciding if you need a type variable, ask yourself if that type variable is used to relate two or more parameters, or to relate a parameter type with the return type. If the answer is no, then a wildcard should suffice."

Note: In book only second method is given and type parameter name is S instead of 'T'. First method is not there in the book.