Converting non-generic List type to Generic List type in Java 1.5

Answer 1

If you just cast to List in any old place you will get an "unchecked" compiler warning. We resolved that by moving it to a utility method.

public class Lists {
    @SuppressWarnings({"unchecked"})
    public static  List cast(List list) {
        return (List) list;
    }
}

Caller now gets no warning, e.g.:

for (Element child : Lists.cast(parent.getChildren())) {
    // ...
}

That checkedList utility is in theory a great idea, but in practice it sucks to have to pass in the class you expect. I hope Java will get runtime generic typing information eventually.