Are generics form of polymorphism ?

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Hi,
I have clear Idea about the term polymorphism still I am curious about generics. Can we treat the generics as polymorphism or not? It would be helpful if any link stating the same can be shared along with the views on question.

Posted 24-Aug-14 15:16pm

deveoper12345

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David Lee 145 24-Aug-14 21:28pm

I think we cannot treat the generics as polymorphism. In my opinion the best case of polymorphism is the factory pattern.

See this page.
http://www.dotnetperls.com/factory

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 24-Aug-14 23:19pm

You are right, but this not related to the notion of factory.
Please see Solution 2 where I tried to explain why we cannot consider generic-based polymorphism. Generic type simply do not exist as the runtime types of any objects. Object types are always non-generic.
—SA

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Answer 1 · 2014-08-24T17:15:00

Solution 2

No, we cannot.

Let's suppose we have some set of objects; and some or all of those objects have been created by instantiation of some generic classes. Let's look at the runtime types of those objects. All the types are not generic, because, before we can instantiate an object, we needed to instantiate a generic type to become a complete type, not a generic type. In other words, run-time types of objects are never generic. This way, we can exclude this feature from consideration when discussing polymorphism.

—SA

Posted 24-Aug-14 17:15pm

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

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David Lee 145 24-Aug-14 23:43pm

Yes. You explained the reason very well.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 25-Aug-14 0:01am

Thank you, David.
—SA

Abhinav S 25-Aug-14 0:05am

Well explained.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 25-Aug-14 0:05am

Thank you, Abhinav.
—SA

Abhinav S · Answer 2 · 2014-08-24T15:41:00

Solution 1

Generics and polymorphism can be made to work together - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dd799517%28v=vs.100%29.aspx[^].

Posted 24-Aug-14 15:41pm

Abhinav S

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 24-Aug-14 23:17pm

Yes of course, but you completely avoided answering the main question: can generics make kind of polymorphism or not?
I tried to answer, please see Solution 2.
—SA