Question

I want to initialize a static Class variable in Java:

public class NumberExpression {
    private static Class numberClass = Class.forName("java.lang.Number");
};

The above code segment doesn’t work because Class.forName throws a ClassNotFoundException. Something like new Integer().getClass() won’t work because Number is an abstract class.

I suppose I could wrap Class.forName around a static method that handles the ClassNotFoundException, but is there a more elegant/standard way of getting what I want?

Edit:

(class “Number” changed to “java.lang.Number”)

Answer 1

Why don’t you do :

private Class numberClass = Number.class;