New Features in Java 5

Several useful features have been introduced in Java 5.

• Generics: A way to make classes type-safe that can work on any type, such as narrowing an instance of a collection to hold a specific object type and eliminating the need to cast objects when taking an object out of the collection.
• Enhanced for loop: A cleaner and less error-prone version of the for loop for use with iterators.
• Variable arguments: Support for passing an arbitrary number of parameters to a method.
• Boxing/unboxing: Direct language support for automatic conversion between primitive types and their reference types (such as int and Integer).
• Type-safe enumerations: Clean syntax for defining and using enumerations, supported at the language level.
• Static import: Ability to access static members from a class without need to qualify them with a class name.
• Metadata: Coupled with new tools developed by third-party companies, saves developers the effort of writing boilerplate code by automatically generating the code.