Generics - Illustrated C# 2005 - page 431

Continuing with the Example
In the stack example just shown, with classes MyIntStack and MyFloatStack , the bodies of
the declarations of the classes are identical except at the positions dealing with the type of the
value held by the stack.

￿In MyIntStack , these positions are occupied by type int .

￿In MyFloatStack , they are occupied by float .

You can create a generic class from MyIntStack by doing the following:

￿ Take the MyIntStack class declaration, and instead of substituting float for int , substi-

tute the placeholder T .

Change the class name to MyStack . ￿

Place the string <T> after the class name. ￿

The result is the following generic class declaration. The string consisting of the angle
brackets with the T means that T is a placeholder for a type. (It doesn't have to be the letter T —
it could be any identifier.) Everywhere throughout the body of the class declaration where T is
located, an actual type will need to be substituted by the compiler.

class MyStack < T >
{
int StackPointer = 0;
T [] StackArray;

public void Push( T x ) {...}

public T Pop() {...}
...
}