The diamond operator in java 7 allows code like the following:
List<String> list = new LinkedList<>();
However in Java 5/6, I can simply write:
List<String> list = new LinkedList();
My understanding of type erasure is that these are exactly the same. (The generic gets removed at runtime anyway).
Why bother with the diamond at all? What new functionality / type safety does it allow? If it doesn’t yield any new functionality why do they mention it as a feature? Is my understanding of this concept flawed?
