Many modern programming languages support basic generic programming, sufficient to
implement type-safe polymorphic containers. Some languages have moved beyond this
basic support to a broader, more powerful interpretation of generic programming, and their
extensions have proven valuable in practice. This paper reports on a comprehensive
comparison of generics in six programming languages: C++, Standard ML, Haskell, Eiffel,
Java (with its proposed generics extension), and Generic C. By implementing a substantial …

Many modern programming languages support basic generic programming, sufficient to
implement type-safe polymorphic containers. Some languages have moved beyond this
basic support to a broader, more powerful interpretation of generic programming, and their
extensions have proven valuable in practice. This paper reports on a comprehensive
comparison of generics in six programming languages: C++, Standard ML, Haskell, Eiffel,
Java (with its proposed generics extension), and Generic C#. By implementing a substantial …