java java.lang.reflect.Array.getLength vs array.length

Question

I've got to maintain some code written by someone else who is no longer with the company. I'm seeing several references to java.lang.reflect.Array.getLength(anArray). Its working, but I've never seen reflection being used to get an array length. Does anyone know the difference between:

java.lang.reflect.Array.getLength(anArray) and anArray.length

Is it just syntactic sugar?

Thanks!

Answer 1

If anArray is statically typed to an array type, you should use anArray.length (not a method call, btw). You'd use the reflection form if you only had a reference to the array as Object.