Java Generic ReturnTypes

Article by: Manish Methani

Last Updated: October 22, 2021 at 2:04pm IST
44 sec read

In the previous tutorial we studied Generic Methods. How generic Methods handle different Types. Generic Methods also has a feature of handling return types.

Suppose you had written one generic method which finds maximum from three numbers. So you have passed an integer number. Now in future, you have to find the maximum of three characters. So do you want to write different method for that? No of course. You can use Generic return type instead of void.

Example :-

This example demonstartes how Generic method handles Generic Return types .

public class GenericReturnTypesDemo {
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    System.out.println(max(10,23,45));
    System.out.println(max('c','d','z'));
  }
  
  public static > T max(T a, T b, T c)
  {
    T max = a;
    
    if(b.compareTo(a) > 0)
            max = b;
    if(c.compareTo(max) > 0)
      max = c;
    return max;
  }
}

Output :-

45
z