This might be a stupid question, but I just saw a question asking how to create a Type variable for a generic type. The consensus seemed to be that you should have a dummy method returning that type, and then use reflection to get it (in this case he wanted Map<String, String>). Something like this :

public Map<String, String> dummy() { throw new Error(); }

Type mapStringString = Class.forName("ThisClass").getMethod("dummy").getGenericReturnType();

My question is, not having used reflection that much, couldn't you just do something like:

Type mapStringString = new ParameterizedType() {
    public Type getRawType() {
        return Map.class;
    }

    public Type getOwnerType() {
        return null;
    }

    public Type[] getActualTypeArguments() {
        return new Type[] { String.class, String.class };
    }
};

Would this work? If not, why not? And what are some of the dangers/problems if it does (besides being able to return some Type like Integer<String> which is obviously not possible.