Welcome to the first post on my blog. I would like to dedicate it to a topic that sounds quite intimidating but is in fact quite simple to understand. There are already good explanations of type variance to be found on other blogs or Stack Overflow but I would like to take a broader approach and look at how different programming languages deal with it.

The problem

So, what is this cryptic title about? Let me start with this classic example in Java.

1
2
3
4
5
6
class Animal { }
class Dog extends Animal { }
class Cat extends Animal { }

MyList<Dog> dogs = new MyList<Dog>();
MyList<Animal> animals = dogs;

Would you expect this piece of code to compile? The answer depends on what operations are available on MyList. Let’s assume that MyList is very similiar to ArrayList and it allows you to get and add.

1
2
3
4
class MyList<T> {
public T get(int index) { /* get element at index */ }
public void add(T element) { /* add at the end */ }
}

Now, assuming that the questioned piece of code would compile, it would be perfectly valid to add a Cat to the list of Animals which is in fact a list of Dogs. This is not something we would want the compiler to allow.

1
2
animals.add(new Cat());
Dog dog = dogs.get(0); // we are expecting a Dog but we've got a Cat!

In this case, MyList<Dog> is not (does not inherit from) MyList<Animal>. We call MyList invariant. This is the kind of behaviour that we get in Java. Let’s now assume that MyList is read-only and does not have an add method.

1
2
3
4
class MyList<T> {
public MyList(List<T> original) { /* copy from original */ }
public T get(int index) { /* get element at index */ }
}

Now, the previous issue is no longer the case. If we call animals.get() we can get either a Dog or a Cat an we are ok with this. In such case, it makes sense to allow the questioned piece to compile. Hence, MyList<Dog> is (does inherit from) MyList<Animal> and we call MyList covariant.

Java

As stated before, in Java the below piece would not compile. In other words, generic types in Java are invariant. This is quite limiting when compared to other languages which allow you to specify variance for generics.

1
2
MyList<Dog> dogs = new MyList<Dog>();
MyList<Animal> animals = dogs;

Compiler output:

1
HelloWorld.java:22: error: incompatible types

However, there is an interesting exception to generic’s invariance in Java. The below code will compile:

1
2
Dog[] dogs = new Dog[];
Animal[] animals = dogs;<br>

So, what happens when we try do add a Cat to an array of Dogs? Java gives us an exception (of course this will happen on runtime and not on compile time). So, arrays are covariant in Java! This is not a very elegant situation and the reasons behind it are mainly historic. There is a good explanation of this on Stack Overflow.

C#

Similarly to Java, C# would not allow us to compile below code:

1
2
3
4
class MyList<T> { }

MyList<Dog> dogs = new MyList<Dog>();
MyList<Animal> animals = dogs;

Compiler output:

1
error CS0029: Cannot implicitly convert type \`MyList' to \`MyList'

However, C# goes a step further and allows us to create variant generic interfaces. It is possible to mark a type parameter with the in keyword to make the generic interface covariant.

1
2
3
4
5
interface IMyList<out T> { }
class MyList<T> : IMyList<T> { }

IMyList<Dog> dogs = new MyList<Dog>();
IMyList<Animal> animals = dogs;

There are some nice examples of contravariance in C#. Since covariance means that you can use a more derived type than specified in type parameter, in contravariance you can use a more generic type than specified. It may seem a bit counterintuitive but let’s look at the Action<T> type which represents a function that takes a parameter of type T and does not return anything.

1
2
3
Action<Base> b = (target) => { /* do something with target */ };
Action<Derived> d = b;
d(new Derived());

In this case, it makes sense to say that Action<Base> is Action<Derived>. Action<Derived> requires a prameter of type Derived so giving it an instance of something more generic (Base) is ok. In the next post I will look at how variance is exploited in inheritance.