Reflection - The Java Programming Language - page 631

is always true (assuming i is a valid index of course).
Type variable objects are created on demand by the reflection methods
that return them, and there is no requirement that you receive the
same TypeVariable object each time you ask for the same type variable.
However, the objects returned for a given type variable must be equi-
valent according to the equals method. The bounds for a type variable
are not created until getBounds is invoked, so getBounds can throw
TypeNotPresentException if a type used in the bounds cannot be found. It
can also throw MalformedParameterizedTypeException if any of the bounds
refers to a ParameterizedType instance that cannot be created for some
reason.
16.9.2. Parameterized Types
Parameterized types, such as List<String> , are represented by objects
that implement the ParameterizedType interface. You can obtain the ac-
tual type arguments for the parameterized type from getActualTypeAr-
guments , which returns an array of Type objects. For example, getActu-
alTypeArguments invoked on the parameterized type List<String> would
yield an array of length one, containing String.class as its only element.
The getOwnerType method (which perhaps would have been better called
geTDeclaringType ) returns the Type object for the type in which this Para-
meterizedType object is a member. If this is not a member of another type
then null is returned. This is analogous to the Class.getDeclaringClass
method except that a Type object is returned.
Like TypeVariable objects, ParameterizedType objects are created on de-
mand and are not always the same object, so you should use equals
not == to check for equivalent parameterized type objects. Also, when a
parameterized type is created, all its type arguments are also created,
and this applies recursively. Both of the above methods will sometimes
throw either TypeNotFoundException or MalformedParameterizedTypeExcep-
tion .