I was going through lectures of Algorithms on Coursera by Robert Sedgewick.I was a bit confused when Mr.Robert pointed out that one cannot use Generics with Arrays as it is not allowed. But ArrayList in Collection Framework uses Arrays internally and Generic datatypes are allowed.I mean to say that we can do the following:
ArrayList<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();
One hack he pointed out was this:
public class FixedCapacityStack<Item>{
private Item[] s;
private int N = 0;
public FixedCapacityStack(int capacity)
{ s = (Item[]) new Object[capacity];} //this hack
He also mentioned that this is an ugly hack and must be avoided and it also produces warning during compilation.
My Question is:
1.) How does ArrayList then internally represent various Generics Types?
2.) If (assumed) they use the hack mentioned above why it doesn't produce a warning when we compile a program with ArrayList?
3.) Is there any better way apart from that cast above?