Collections.sort implementation

Question

I can not understand the method implementation and the logic of Collections.sort method. Here is the method implementation i found,

public static 

        

Answer 1

First of all this method return type is void. What is > does in the method signature?

is a generic Type that you use in your method, T could only be an object which implements java.util.Comparable.

for example if you want to pass a List to the sort method it'd compile as java.lang.String implements java.lang.Comparable, but if you pass List you'd get a compiler error unless Animal implements java.lang.comparable