Re: Incomparable types

Hi everyone,
I have a reasonably strong .NET background and I have a problem
understanding the Class class in Java. The Type class in .NET (along
with the typeof() operator and System.Object's GetType() method) seems
pretty straightforward to me: an instance of the Type class is
instantiated for every type loaded into the system (even with
generics). But it's not so easy to understand with Java, it seems. If I
try to compile the sample code below it fails on line 3 of the main
method. If I explicitly cast the left-hand and right-hand sides of the
equality expression (as per line 4) to Class, then the compiler is
happy. Please could someone let me know what the subtle difference is
that I am missing out on?

public class NewClass {

    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        Integer i = new Integer(123);
        String s = "456";
        //System.out.println(i.getClass() == s.getClass()); //
compilation failure
        System.out.println(((Class)i.getClass()) ==
((Class)s.getClass()));
    }

}