Re: Random Enum

[...]
If you can pass a Class instance to the method, as Eric Sosman
suggested.

public class RandomEnum // untested, not even compiled yet
{
  private static final Random rand = new Random();

  public static <E extends Enum<E>> E random( Class <E> clazz )
  {
    E [] values = clazz.getEnumConstants();
    return values [rand.nextInt( values.length )];
  }
}

As to Eric's fear that this is "unpleasantly intricate", we just have
to get over it.

In use it's very simple. Given an enum 'Foo':

  Foo value = RandomEnum.random( Foo.class );