What do I return if the return type of a method is Void? (Not void!)

Question

Due to the use of Generics in Java I ended up in having to implement a function having Void as return type:

public Void doSomething() {
    //..         


        

Answer 1

To make clear why the other suggestions you gave don't work:

Void.class and Void.TYPE point to the same object and are of type Class, not of Void.

That is why you can't return those values. new Void() would be of type Void but that constructor doesn't exist. In fact, Void has no public constructors and so cannot be instantiated: You can never have any object of type Void except for the polymorphic null.

Hope this helps! :-)