October 14, 2013

Java Generic Array Creation Error

Filed under: Technical — Tags: , — James Bunton @ 6:26 pm

Java Generics are a neat hack to save some typing. They have a bunch of problems though. Most of these are due to the lack of runtime type information. Today a friend asked why you can’t create do:

new ArrayList<String>[10]

The compiler gives the error error: generic array creation.

Following is a short explanation of what generics can and cannot do in Java.

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