Remember to check the "with heading" box in the lower right corner. Surround code listings with &lt;pre&gt; and &lt;/pre&gt;, and if you use &lt; and &gt; symbols you must say & lt ; and & gt ; <hr> <hr><b>2004/09/26 23:17 EST (via web):</b><br> Two points: 1. When Neal suggested that you declare the array as an 'Object[]' then I think he meant that 'rep' returns an 'Object[]' not a 'T[]', thats my reading of his comments anyway. The reason is that you will be *less* surprised by the 'ClassCastException' particularly since the documentation presumably says that it returns an array of 'Object's and *not* 'T's. 2. The method suggested of using 'java.lang.reflect.Array.newInstance( int )' works OK for an array because all arrays have a one-argument constructor. However in general you can't rely on a type having a no-argument constructor, i.e. 'java.lang.Class.newInstance()' might fail. The general solution is to make an abstract-instance-factory method in 'GenericArray', i.e. 'public abstract T[] instance( int size );', and thus make 'GenericArray' abstract. Then to use 'GenericArray' you must sub-class it and provide a correctly typed instance-factory method, e.g.: <pre> abstract class GenericArray&lt; T &gt; { private final T[] array; public GenericArray( final int size ) { array = instance( size ); } public abstract T[] instance( final int size ); public void set( final int index, final T value ) { array[ index ] = value; } public T get( final int index ) { return array[ index ]; } public T[] getArray() { return array; } } public class IntegerArray extends GenericArray&lt; Integer &gt; { public IntegerArray( final int size ) { super( size ); } public Integer[] instance( final int size ) { return new Integer[ size ]; } public static void main( final String[] notUsed ) { final int size = 3; final IntegerArray ia = new IntegerArray( size ); for ( int i = 0; i &lt; size; i++ ) ia.set( i, i ); for ( int i = 0; i &lt; size; i++ ) System.out.print( ia.get( i ) + " " ); System.out.println(); final Integer[] pia = ia.getArray(); for ( int i = 0; i &lt; size; i++ ) System.out.print( pia[ i ] + " " ); System.out.println(); } } </pre> a
Optional change note:
For editing help, see HelpPage .