Edit Question - KnowledgeHub

Title Body

If I have a class com.example.test.Enum2.Test as in the code below, why does getCanonicalName() return com.example.test.Enum2.Test but Class.forName() requires "com.example.test.Enum2$Test" as an argument? Is there a way to be consistent, so that I can serialize/deserialize an enum value by its name, without having to check each $ vs . possibility, when the enum is a nested class? package com.example.test; import java.util.Arrays; public class Enum2 { enum Test { FOO, BAR, BAZ; } public static void main(String[] args) { for (String className : Arrays.asList( "com.example.test.Enum2.Test", "com.example.test.Enum2$Test")) { try { Class<?> cl = Class.forName(className); System.out.println(className+" found: "+cl.getCanonicalName()); } catch (ClassNotFoundException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } System.out.println(Test.FOO.getDeclaringClass().getCanonicalName()); } } clarification: I'm looking for a good way to deal with this problem in a real application (not just the above contrived test case), either: a. serialize/deserialize using getCanonicalName() 's output (dotted name only), and for Class.forName() try each possibility in turn e.g. first "com.example.test.Enum2.Test" , then "com.example.test.Enum2$Test" , then "com.example.test$Enum2$Test" , etc. b. use proper $ notation, so that Class.forName() works right the first time. But this requires me to implement an alternative to getCanonicalName() that produces a string that is consistent with Class.forName() . I am leaning toward approach (b), partially from gut

Tags (comma-separated) Cancel