  We study genericity of dynamical properties in the space of homeomorphisms of
the Cantor set and in the space of subshifts of a suitably large shift space.
These rather different settings are related by a Glasner-King type
correspondence: genericity in one is equivalent to genericity in the other.
  By applying symbolic techniques in the shift-space model we derive new
results about genericity of dynamical properties for transitive and totally
transitive homeomorphisms of the Cantor set. We show that the isomorphism class
of the universal odometer is generic in the space of transitive systems. On the
other hand, the space of totally transitive systems displays much more varied
dynamics. In particular, we show that in this space the isomorphism class of
every Cantor system without periodic points is dense, and the following
properties are generic: minimality, zero entropy, disjointness from a fixed
totally transitive system, weak mixing, strong mixing, and minimal self
joinings. The last two stand in striking contrast to the situation in the
measure-preserving category. We also prove a correspondence between genericity
of dynamical properties in the measure-preserving category and genericity of
systems supporting an invariant measure with the same property.
