Life without Generics : Generics Basics « Generics « Java Tutorial

1. Java Tutorial
2. Generics
3. Generics Basics

When retrieving a member from stringList1, you get an instance of java.lang.Object. In order to work with the original type of the member element, you must first downcast it to String.

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class MainClass {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    List stringList1 = new ArrayList ();
    stringList1.add ("Java 5");
    stringList1.add ("with generics");



    String s1 = (String) stringList1.get (0);
    
  }

}