Name: gm110360 Date: 09/11/2003


A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
ClassCastExceptions do not inform developers as to what the cast conversion attempted was.

JUSTIFICATION :
a more verbose error message in ClassCastException would eliminate the need for developers to add special try-catch code whenever we are debugging these exceptions.

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
    Foo foo = (Foo) "wrong";

java.lang.ClassCastException: java.lang.String cannot be cast to a org.bogus.Foo

ACTUAL -
java.lang.ClassCastException has no message.

---------- BEGIN SOURCE ----------
    String s;
    try {
        s = (String) new Object();
    } catch (ClassCastException e) {
        if(e.getMessage() == null);
            throw new RuntimeException("ClassCastException should be verbose", e);
    }


---------- END SOURCE ----------

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
    Foo foo;
    try {
        foo = (Foo) obj;
    } catch (ClassCastException e) {
        throw new RuntimeException(obj.getClass() + " not a " + Foo.class, e);
    }
(Incident Review ID: 201870)
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