I am puzzled by generics. You can declare a field like:

Class<Collection<String>> clazz = ...

It seems logical that you could assign this field with:

Class<Collection<String>> clazz = Collection<String>.class;

However, this generates an error:

  Syntax error on token ">", void expected after this token

So it looks like the .class operator does not work with generics. So I tried:

  class A<S> {}
  class B extends A<String> {}
  Class<A<String>> c = B.class;

Also does not work, generates:

  Type mismatch: cannot convert from Class<Test.StringCollection> 
  to Class<Collection<String>>

Now, I really fail to see why this should not work. I know generic types are not reified but in both cases it seems to be fully type safe without having access to runtime generic types. Anybody an idea?

Peter Kriens