Java Generics: Array containing generics [duplicate]

Answer 1

Just use Object[] as your data store, and manually cast it to the specific type. This is acceptable in building infrastructure stuff, where type relations can be harder than usual.

For what it's worth, this is the way to create generic array in Java:

@SafeVarargs
static <E> E[] newArray(int length, E... array)
{
    return Arrays.copyOf(array, length);
}

//used in your example

    private LinkedList<T>[] table;

    public HashTable(int size) {
        table = newArray(size);
    }

Answer 2

This worked for me:

public class HashTable<T> {

    private LinkedList<T> table[];

    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    public HashTable(int size) {
        table = new LinkedList[size];
    }

}

For example:

HashTable<String> t = new HashTable<String>(10);
t.table[0] = new LinkedList<String>();
t.table[0].add("test");
System.out.println(t.table[0].get(0));

Yes, the constructor generated a warning (that explains the "unchecked" annotation), but afterwards the code works without more warnings.

Answer 3

It isn't ideal, but you can do this sort of thing:

import java.util.LinkedList;

public class Test
{
    static class HashTable<T>
    {
        public HashTable(int size)
        {
            LinkedList<T>[] table = (LinkedList<T>[])java.lang.reflect.Array.newInstance(LinkedList.class, size);
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        HashTable<Integer> table = new HashTable<Integer>(23);
    }
}