casting Object array to Integer array error

Question

What's wrong with the following code?

 Object[] a = new Object[1];
 Integer b=1;
 a[0]=b;
 Integer[] c = (Integer[]) a;

The code has the following error at the last line : Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ClassCastException: [Ljava.lang.Object; cannot be cast to [Ljava.lang.Integer;

Answer 1

You can't cast an Object array to an Integer array. You have to loop through all elements of a and cast each one individually.

Object[] a = new Object[1];
Integer b=1;
a[0]=b;
Integer[] c = new Integer[a.length];
for(int i = 0; i < a.length; i++)
{
    c[i] = (Integer) a[i];
}

Edit: I believe the rationale behind this restriction is that when casting, the JVM wants to ensure type-safety at runtime. Since an array of Objects can be anything besides Integers, the JVM would have to do what the above code is doing anyway (look at each element individually). The language designers decided they didn't want the JVM to do that (I'm not sure why, but I'm sure it's a good reason).

However, you can cast a subtype array to a supertype array (e.g. Integer[] to Object[])!

Answer 2

java.lang.ClassCastException: [Ljava.lang.Object; cannot be cast to [Ljava.lang.Integer;

you try to cast an Array of Object to cast into Array of Integer. You cant do it. This type of downcast is not permitted.

You can make an array of Integer, and after that copy every value of the first array into second array.