A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
ClassCastExceptions do not inform developers as to what the cast conversion attempted was.

JUSTIFICATION :
a more verbose error message in ClassCastException would eliminate the need for developers to add special try-catch code whenever we are debugging these exceptions.

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
    Foo foo = (Foo) "wrong";

java.lang.ClassCastException: java.lang.String cannot be cast to a org.bogus.Foo

ACTUAL -
java.lang.ClassCastException has no message.

---------- BEGIN SOURCE ----------
    String s;
    try {
        s = (String) new Object();
    } catch (ClassCastException e) {
        if(e.getMessage() == null);
            throw new RuntimeException("ClassCastException should be verbose", e);
    }


---------- END SOURCE ----------

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
    Foo foo;
    try {
        foo = (Foo) obj;
    } catch (ClassCastException e) {
        throw new RuntimeException(obj.getClass() + " not a " + Foo.class, e);
    }
(Incident Review ID: 201870) 
======================================================================
  xxxxx@xxxxx   10/4/04 15:37 GMT

N/A

This is likely a duplicate of bug 4488551.

In jdk1.4.1 and jdk1.4.2, no detail message was provided.  As of tiger b26, a 
detail message identical to that observed in 1.4 is now provided on solaris
and linux (no testing done on windows):

$ java -version
java version "1.5.0-beta"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0-beta-b26)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0-beta-b26, mixed mode)
$ java Test      
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.RuntimeException: ClassCastException should be verbose
        at Test.main(Test.java:8)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: java.lang.Object
        at Test.main(Test.java:5)

--   xxxxx@xxxxx   2003-10-29

<original code>
if(e.getMessage() == null); // <-- oops!
</original code>
Confusing workaround - that ";" character really goofed it up, didn't it!