Sorting an array of any Comparable objects

[plague]

I've been searching all over the internet for this to no avail, so thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me. Basically I have to write a class that contains a sort method which takes in an array of any Comparable Objects and returns a new array of the same type without altering the original. It has to be able to do something like this:

sortedArray = SortClass.sort(unsortedArray);

where the arrays are separate and of any type of Object. I imagine I need to create a new array and clone each object, but the problem I'm having is how do I make the new array and cast the objects to the same type as the array that was passed in? Would it be something like:

public static Object[] sort(Object[] toBeSorted) {...}

or will I have to make use of the Class class, using Class<T>? I don't really know how to do this, I was just looking around on the API spec and this seems useful.

Thanks again.

[Belisarius]

You know that it's Comparables coming in, so you might as well return a Comparable array. The end user can cast it back. I haven't played around with the advancements with auto-casting in Java 1.5 though, so there might be a more efficient way to do it now.

The problem with cloning is that objects aren't required to implement it. For instance, BigDecimal is a Comparable, but it doesn't implement cloning. Therefore you aren't able to clone an array of them.

Now, you could create a new array and return it full of pointers to the objects in the other array, at which point you've fulfilled the letter of the assignment. You'll be returning a new array that affect the original. The catch is that any alterations to an object in the new array will affect the old one. But your assignment kinda sucks in that you can't ensure that the array coming in contains Cloneable objects.

As for generics and casting, I'd look at this PDF (it's small). I think you'll find Chapter 5 to have what you're looking for.

Let me know if you're still having problems.