This is a followup question after reading this Q&A:
I have a class like so:
class BinarySearchTree<E extends Comparable> { ... }
so I can create an instance like this:
final tree = BinarySearchTree<int>();
My question is about using Comparable vs Comparable<E>. When I do this:
class BinarySearchTree<E extends Comparable> { ... }
then the type defaults to E extends Comparable<dynamic>. I normally try to avoid dynamic, so in order to be more explicit about the type that is being compared, it seems like I should write it this:
class BinarySearchTree<E extends Comparable<E>> { ... }
But in that case I get an error here:
final tree = BinarySearchTree<int>();
// 'int' doesn't conform to the bound 'Comparable<int>' of the type parameter 'E'.
// Try using a type that is or is a subclass of 'Comparable<int>'.
This demonstrates my lack of understanding of generics. What am I missing?
CodePudding user response：
In Dart, a class cannot implement 2 different concrete instances of a generic interface:
abstract class Foo<T> {}
// error: Foo can only be implemented once
class Bar implements Foo<String>, Foo<int> {}
num implements Comparable<num>, because it would be slightly absurd for the built-in number types to not be comparable. However, since int is a subtype of num (and therefore inherits Comparable<num>, it cannot have Comparable<int>.
This leads to the slightly weird consequence that int does not implement Comparable<int>.
The problem you're facing is that from the language's point of view, there are 2 types involved: the type of the elements being compared, and the type of the elements they are being compared to.
As such, your type will need 2 type parameters:
class Tree<T extends Comparable<S>, S> {
T get foo;
}
final intTree = Tree<int, num>();
final foo = intTree.foo; // returns an int
Admittedly, this isn't a super clean solution, but if you're using Dart 2.13 or higher, you can use typedefs to make it a bit nicer:
typedef IntTree = Tree<int, num>;
typedef RegularTree<T> = Tree<T, T>;
final intTree = IntTree();
final stringTree = RegularTree<String>();
intTree.foo // is an int
stringTree.foo // is a String
There is another option, which is to just drop some type safety and use Comparable<dynamic>, but personally I'd recommend against it. BTW, if you want to avoid accidentally missing type parameters you can disable implicit-dynamic as described here: https://dart.dev/guides/language/analysis-options#enabling-additional-type-checks
This will give an error any time the type dynamic is inferred from context without the programmer actually typing the word dynamic