ArrayFactory SAM type / toArray

[Brian Goetz]

But having them return Object undermines much of the point of adding 
these methods in the first place -- right now, we have

   Object[] toArray

and this forces unsafe casts.  We want Stream<T>.toArray() to return a 
T[].

We can still get to our goals for Collections/Streams with returning 
T[], but it could be creating some trouble for the future.

On 11/8/2012 11:46 AM, Raab, Donald wrote:
> I was thinking about this.  If the methods returns Object, could we not just have an if-statement check if it was one of the primitive types and return a new int[] or new double[] in the method if they do instead of making the reflective call?
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Brian Goetz [mailto:brian.goetz at oracle.com]
>> Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 11:44 AM
>> To: Raab, Donald [Tech]
>> Cc: lambda-libs-spec-experts at openjdk.java.net
>> Subject: Re: ArrayFactory SAM type / toArray
>>
>> On 9/19/2012 10:27 PM, Raab, Donald wrote:
>>> Could we add the following methods to the Class class?
>>>
>>> T[] emptyArray()
>>> T[] newArray(int size)
>>
>> I prototyped these, and they work fine for reference types but fall
>> apart for primitive arrays.  There *is* a Class literal for int.class,
>> but we can't make it return an int[] with this method.  (This is one
>> reason that Array.newInstance returns Object.)  Performance testing
>> would be needed to ensure they are competitive with alternatives.
>