Creating generic arrays in Java

Question

public K[] toArray()
{
    K[] result = (K[])new Object[this.size()];
    int index  = 0;
    for(K k : this)
        result[index++] = k;
    return result;
}


        

Answer 1

Ok, this not works K[] result = new K[this.size()];

If you could hold class. Then:

  Class claz;
  Test(Class m) {
     claz = m;
  }

  <K>  K[] toArray() { 
K[] array=(K[])Array.newInstance(claz,this.size());
return array;
}

Answer 2

Your code throws that exception because it's actually giving you an array of type Object. Maurice Perry's code works, but the cast to K[ ] will result in a warning, as the compiler can't guarantee type safety in that case due to type erasure. You can, however, do the following.

import java.util.ArrayList;  
import java.lang.reflect.Array;  

public class ExtremeCoder<K> extends ArrayList<K>  
{  
   public K[ ] toArray(Class<K[ ]> clazz)  
   {  
      K[ ] result = clazz.cast(Array.newInstance(clazz.getComponentType( ), this.size( )));  
      int index = 0;  
      for(K k : this)  
         result[index++] = k;  
      return result;  
   }  
}

This will give you an array of the type you want with guaranteed type safety. How this works is explained in depth in my answer to a similar question from a while back.

Answer 3

You can't: you must pass the class as an argument:

public <K> K[] toArray(Class<K> clazz)
{
    K[] result = (K[])Array.newInstance(clazz,this.size());
    int index  = 0;
    for(K k : this)
        result[index++] = k;
    return result;
}