Class<T> implements Serializable? What are the Implications?

[kennyman94]

Hello fellow programmers. A thought occurred to me while i was doing some coding and I started to wonder: why does the class Class<T> implement the Serializable interface? At that point I started to wonder if a .class file is simply a serialized Class object. Would anyone care to venture an explanation for this? If Class is serializable, then doesn't it sort of defeat the purpose of only being able to create Class objects through the ClassLoader because one could simply write the class object to a .ser file and then deserialize the Class object when you want to use the class. This could be useful in allowing multiple Class objects to be in the same file instead of requiring a seperate .class file for each class's definition.

[JosAH]

Implementing Serializable means that instantiations of the class that implements this interface are serializable; not the class itself.

kind regarrds,

Jos

[kennyman94]

I apologize. Maybe I didn't make myself as clear as i thought. I understand that the instantiations are what is serializable. however, is it not possible to use the instantiations of different classes' class objects to store multiple classes in the same file and then just deserialize them into a program? Also, is a .class file basically a serialized version of the corresponding Class instance?