Q about Collection: toArray operation

[Gian Franco]

Dear all,
The Collection interface provides the signature of
the method toArray.
In the Sun's tutorial on collections it says:

The following snippet dumps the contents of c into a newly
allocated array of String whose length is identical to the
number of elements in c:
String[] a = (String[]) c.toArray(new String[0]);

Why does it give the array argument a length of 0? And not the
amount of elements in c?
Best regards,
Gian Franco Casula
[ February 20, 2004: Message edited by: Gian Franco Casula ]
[ February 20, 2004: Message edited by: Gian Franco Casula ]
[ February 20, 2004: Message edited by: Gian Franco Casula ]

[William Brogden]

In the case of the empty array, toArray will use the type to create a new array. However, if you know the size, you can pass in an array of exactly the right size and it will be used. I suppose they figure it is more flexible to provide both ways of operating.
Bill

[Gian Franco]

Thank you Bill,
Gian Franco