Type-safe, generic, empty Collections with static generics
- by Droo
I return empty collections vs. null whenever possible. I switch between two methods for doing so using java.util.Collections:
return Collections.EMPTY_LIST;
return Collections.emptyList();
where emptyList() is supposed to be type-safe. But I recently discovered:
return Collections.<ComplexObject> emptyList();
return Collections.<ComplexObject> singletonList(new ComplexObject());
etc.
I see this method in Eclipse Package Explorer:
<clinit> () : void
but I don't see how this is done in the source code (1.5). How is this magic tomfoolerie happening!!
