All type erasure techniques in C++ are done with function pointers (for behaviour) and void* (for data). The “different” methods simply differ in the way they add semantic sugar. Virtual functions, e.g., are just semantic sugar for struct Class { struct vtable { void (*dtor)(Class*); void (*func)(Class*,double); } * vtbl }; iow: function pointers. That … Read more
It’s because Java’s arrays (unlike generics) contain, at runtime, information about its component type. So you must know the component type when you create the array. Since you don’t know what T is at runtime, you can’t create the array.
This answer uses the Manifest-API, which is deprecated as of Scala 2.10. Please see answers below for more current solutions. Scala was defined with Type Erasure because the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), unlike Java, did not get generics. This means that, at run time, only the class exists, not its type parameters. In the example, … Read more
Type erasure applies to the use of generics. There’s definitely metadata in the class file to say whether or not a method/type is generic, and what the constraints are etc. But when generics are used, they’re converted into compile-time checks and execution-time casts. So this code: List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(); list.add(“Hi”); String x = … Read more