How do I address unchecked cast warnings?

Question

Eclipse is giving me a warning of the following form:

Type safety: Unchecked cast from Object to HashMap

This is from a call to

Answer 1

Here's one way I handle this when I override the equals() operation.

public abstract class Section extends Element> {
    Object attr1;

    /**
    * Compare one section object to another.
    *
    * @param obj the object being compared with this section object
    * @return true if this section and the other section are of the same
    * sub-class of section and their component fields are the same, false
    * otherwise
    */       
    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        if (obj == null) {
            // this exists, but obj doesn't, so they can't be equal!
            return false;
        }

        // prepare to cast...
        Section other;

        if (getClass() != obj.getClass()) {
            // looks like we're comparing apples to oranges
            return false;
        } else {
            // it must be safe to make that cast!
            other = (Section) obj;
        }

        // and then I compare attributes between this and other
        return this.attr1.equals(other.attr1);
    }
}

This seems to work in Java 8 (even compiled with -Xlint:unchecked)