Can you discover at runtime what class <T> is?

[couling]

I think I already know the answer to this is "it can't be done" but I need to ask first before giving up and trying something different.

I've got some code which I'm writing with generics. However I have got one of the VERY rare cases where casting is still reqired. What makes this worse is that the one time I must cast in the eintire program is within a generic function. I'd hoped to be able to catch and handle the possible ClassCastException from within the same function.

Now I tried this:

class Foo {
    static <T> T bar() {
        try {
            Object x;
            //... some code that puts an object in x
            T y = (T) x;
            return y;
        }
        catch (ClassCastException e) {
            // Handle what happens if x is not a T.
        }
    }
}

Annoyingly this code did not generate a ClassCastException at all and only generated it when the returned object was placed into a non-generic variable.

If I can get a Class object for T from within my function I can call isAssignableFrom to check this first and prevent the exception entirely. But I can't find a way to get this class object without being actually passed one.

All suggestions welcome.

Thanks