covariance : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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covariance: Java did not originally make the same distinctions that other languages refer to as covariance. With covariance, you can override a method that returns a Dog object with one that returns a Dalmatian object. However, starting with Java 1.5, you can. The returned type must be a subclass of the return type of the method overridden. Most commonly this is used by a clone implementation to return the specific class rather than a generic Object.
contravariance

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