How to cast a complete list without iterating through it in Java

Question

Say I have this class :

public class BaseJob{

String name;

public void setName(String name){
this.name=name;
}
public String getName()
{
   return name;
}
}

and another class that extends it :

public class DetailedJob extends BaseJob{

public void doThing();

}

Furthermore, I have this method in another class :

List<BaseJob> getSomeJobs() 

Now, my problem is :

is it possible to avoid to cast each item sequentially in the returned list of getSomeJobs, if I know for sure that every BaseJob returned is indeed a DetailedJob ?

Put differently, is there another solution than the following to cast all items in the list :

List<BaseJob> baseJobList = getSomeJobs(); 
List<DetailedJob> detailedJobList = new ArrayList<DetailedJob>();
for (BaseJob baseJob : baseJobList)
    detailedJobList.add((DetailedJob) baseJob);

Answer 1

Probably what you want to do is parameterising the class that defines getSomeJobs.

public final class JobHolder<T extends BaseJob> {
    public List<T> getSomeJobs() {
        ...

Generally unchecked casts indicate a design problem. They are unavoidable in certain situations such as low-level implementations and when dealing with serialisation.

Answer 2

If you know that all of the jobs are going to be detailed jobs, why would you put them in an arraylist of basejobs? There's no reason to, and that method would eliminate many possible errors and exceptions.