1/* Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
2 * contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
3 * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
4 * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
5 * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
6 * the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
7 *
8 *     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
9 *
10 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
11 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
12 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
13 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
14 * limitations under the License.
15 */
16
17package java.lang.reflect;
18
19/**
20 * This interface represents a type variables such as {@code 'T'} in {@code
21 * 'public interface Comparable<T>'}, the bounded {@code 'T'} in {@code
22 * 'public interface A<T extends Number>'} or the multiple bounded {@code
23 * 'T'} in {@code 'public interface B<T extends Number & Cloneable>'}.
24 *
25 * @param <D>
26 *            the generic declaration that declares this type variable
27 * @since 1.5
28 */
29public interface TypeVariable<D extends GenericDeclaration> extends Type {
30
31    /**
32     * Returns the upper bounds of this type variable. {@code Object} is the
33     * implicit upper bound if no other bounds are declared.
34     *
35     * @return the upper bounds of this type variable
36     *
37     * @throws TypeNotPresentException
38     *             if any of the bounds points to a missing type
39     * @throws MalformedParameterizedTypeException
40     *             if any of the bounds points to a type that cannot be
41     *             instantiated for some reason
42     */
43    Type[] getBounds();
44
45    /**
46     * Returns the language construct that declares this type variable.
47     *
48     * @return the generic declaration
49     */
50    D getGenericDeclaration();
51
52    /**
53     * Returns the name of this type variable as it is specified in source
54     * code.
55     *
56     * @return the name of this type variable
57     */
58    String getName();
59}
60