casting doubt

[sambasivarao laghuvarapu]

Arraylist l=new Arraylist();
l.add("samba");
l.add("siva");
String[] s=(String[])l.toArray(); //line 1


in line 1 i am getting classCastException.can anyone explain how to convert that objcet Array to string Array

[Jesper de Jong]

Lookup the API documentation of class ArrayList. You'll see that there are two toArray() methods: one that takes no arguments and returns an Object[], and one that does take an argument T[] and returns T[]. You need to use the second toArray() method:

String[] s = (String[]) l.toArray(new String[l.length]);

[Kishore Ryali]

String[] s = (String[]) l.toArray(new String[l.length]);

l.length should be repalced with l.size()

Below code works:

String[] s = (String[]) l.toArray(new String[l.size()]);

I have a doubt regarding the API for toArray in ArrayList class
API says:
public <T> T[] toArray(T[] a)

So if we are using l.toArray(new String[l.size()]), it should return String array. But if i use the below code without type cast

String[] s = l.toArray(new String[l.size()]);

I get below compile error

ArrayListTest.java:10: incompatible types
found : java.lang.Object[]
required: java.lang.String[]
String[] s = l.toArray(new String[l.size()]); //line 1

Please explain.