Question

As far as my understanding goes Object is also a class in java. So,how is it that we can write

Object ob = new Integer[2];

and not

Integer i = new Integer[2];

How is it that a single reference ob can point to array of Integers but reference of type Integer can’t?

Answer 1

From JLS#Chapter 10. Arrays

In the Java programming language, arrays are objects (§4.3.1), are dynamically created, and may be assigned to variables of type Object (§4.3.2). All methods of class Object may be invoked on an array.

All the components of an array have the same type, called the component type of the array. If the component type of an array is T, then the type of the array itself is written T[].