Obtaining an Array class with Java reflection

This morning I needed to find and invoke a method reflectively that had an array parameter. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get the class representing say a char[].

As a reminder, some other ways to get Class instances are:

• Class.forName("my.SillyClass") - for obtaining the Class for my.SillyClass by name
• SillyClass.class - for obtaining the class by type (preferred to the above for type safety)
• Integer.TYPE - for obtaining the Class for any primitive type via their wrapper class

An array is an object and has a class, but I wasn't aware of any way to do the equivalent of the above for an array of some type. One way is to use Class.forName() with the array class signature:

• Class.forName("[C") - for a char[]
• Class.forName("[Ljava.lang.String;") - for a String[]

But then my Java guru Tim Eck pointed out that you can just do:

• char[].class - for a char[]

Hope that helps someone out there!