title: Arrays are reified in Java
body: <p>I recently came across that, Arrays are reified in Java. That is, they know the type information only during run time. But  I am a little confused with this definition. </p>
  
  <p>If Arrays are said to know the type information only during runtime, I should literally be able to assign any values to any arrays, since the typing is known only at run time and errors will be thrown at run time only. But that is not the case in real time. We get a compile time error for that.</p>
  
  <p>So can someone throw light on "what does it mean by - arrays are reified"?</p>