type erasure

plural type erasures

1. countableuncountablecomputingA compile-time process by which explicit data type annotations are removed from a program, before run-time execution.

   Type erasure is a mapping from types (possibly including parameterized types and type variables) to types (that are never parameterized types or type variables).

   2014, James Gosling, Bill Joy, Guy L. Steele Jr., Gilad Bracha, Alex Buckley, The Java Language Specification, Java SE 8 Edition, Addison-Wesley Professional, →ISBN, page 64

   1 more example

   Although .NET does not have type erasure, meaning it supports reified types, the .NET version of Scala currently follows the JVM's erasure model in order to avoid incompatibilities that would require a “forked” implementation.

   2009, Dean Wampler, Alex Payne, Programming Scala: Scalability = Functional Programming + Objects, "O'Reilly Media, Inc.", →ISBN, page 249

2. countableuncountableC++ programmingA technique by which a class is made generic without requiring compile-time template arguments.

   Type erasure is often seen as a mysterious, enigmatic programming technique. It is not exclusive to C++ (most tutorials on type erasure use Java for their examples).

   2019, Fedor G. Pikus, Hands-On Design Patterns with C++: Solve common C++ problems with modern design patterns and build robust applications, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 102