Casting between ArrayLists in Java

Question

Sorry, I thought this was an inheritance question: it was an ArrayList question all along!

Ok, my problem is more specific than I thought. So I have two families of

Answer 1

As stated, you cannot cast ArrayList to ArrayList, but you can cast ArrayList to ArrayList. Or better use List as your return value, because you probably don't rely on the ArrayList implementation anyway:

protected ArrayList getCardBox();

As for your question in the comment, the construction should work as you described: List list = new ArrayList();. You probably have to fill your list, so the method is probably something like this:

protected ArrayList getCardBox() {
    List list = new ArrayList();
    list.add(pokerCard1);
    list.add(pokerCard2);
    return java.util.Collections.unmodifiableList(list);
}