The class representing the primitive type is useful in specifying or examining methods that take or return primitives. For example, if your class has a method that looks like this
class Test {
static int round(float val) {...}
}
and you wish to access this method through reflection, you would need to do this:
Method round = Test.class.getMethod("round", Float.TYPE);
You can examine the return type, too:
if (round.getReturnType == Integer.TYPE) {
System.out.println("Method 'round' returns an int.");
}
Using Float.class
instead
Method round = Test.class.getMethod("round", Float.class);
would not work, because that would pull a different method - this one:
static int round(Float val) {...}