Description Philipe Mulet 2004-04-15 11:27:05 EDT

Cheetah02

The following program is demonstrating a curious behavior in Javac:

public class X { 
    public static void main(String[] args) {
		X x = new X();
		Class<? extends X> c1 = x.getClass();  // OK
		String s = "hello";
		Class<? extends X> c2 = s.getClass();  // KO
    }
}

X.java:6: incompatible types
found   : java.lang.Class<? extends java.lang.String>
required: java.lang.Class<? extends X>
                Class<? extends X> c2 = s.getClass();
                                                  ^
1 error


Officially the type of Object.getClass() is:  Class<? extends Object>.
It seems that the compiler is automatically transforming it into: Class<? 
extends X> for the invocation of x.getClass(). This is what is exposed by the 
subsequent invocation with a String...

Is Object#getClass() specially handled by the compiler ?