Obtaining the array Class of a component type

Question

If I have an instance of Class, is there a way of obtaining a Class instance for its array type? What I'm essentially asking for is the equivalent of a method getArrayType which is the inverse of the getComponentType() method, such that:

array.getClass().getComponentType().getArrayType() == array.getClass() 

Answer 1

One thing that comes to mind is:

java.lang.reflect.Array.newInstance(componentType, 0).getClass(); 

But it creates an unnecessary instance.

Btw, this appears to work:

Class clazz = Class.forName("[L" + componentType.getName() + ";"); 

Here is test. It prints true:

Integer[] ar = new Integer[1]; Class componentType = ar.getClass().getComponentType(); Class clazz = Class.forName("[L" + componentType.getName() + ";");  System.out.println(clazz == ar.getClass()); 

The documentation of Class#getName() defines strictly the format of array class names:

If this class object represents a class of arrays, then the internal form of the name consists of the name of the element type preceded by one or more '[' characters representing the depth of the array nesting.

The Class.forName(..) approach won't directly work for primitives though - for them you'd have to create a mapping between the name (int) and the array shorthand - (I)