Provides access to a concrete type and its optional generic type parameters.
Java 5 and later support generic types. These types consist of a raw class with type parameters. This class models such a Type
class but ensures that the type is reified. Reification means that the Type graph associated with a Java 5 Type
instance is traversed until the type becomes a concrete class. This class is available with the {@link #getRawClass()} method. The optional type parameters are recursivelyrepresented as Reified Types.
In Java 1.4, a class has by definition no type parameters. This class implementation provides the Reified Type for Java 1.4 by making the raw class the Java 1.4 class and using a Reified Type based on the Object
class for any requested type parameter.
A Blueprint extender implementations can subclass this class and provide access to the generic type parameter graph for conversion. Such a subclass must reify the different Java 5 Type
instances into the reified form. That is, a form where the raw Class is available with its optional type parameters as Reified Types.
@Immutable
@version $Revision: 8083 $