How does a class literal work?
<blockquote>
  <p><strong>Possible Duplicate:</strong><br>
  <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2160788/what-is-a-class-literal-in-java">What is a class literal in Java?</a>  </p>
</blockquote>



<p>I was going through literals in <a href="http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/nutsandbolts/datatypes.html" rel="nofollow">the Java tutorial</a> where I came across this sentence:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Finally, there's also a special kind of literal called a class literal, formed by taking a type name and appending ".class"; for example, <code>String.class</code>. This refers to the object (of type Class) that represents the type itself.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Which doesn't make any sense to me, even though I paid attention to all the other topics prior to this. Can anyone explain in simple language with examples or references?</p>
