Hi - I was wondering if the later java versions (1.5 and higher) allow me to
do something to avoid this silliness.

This happens all the time.  I am trying to make a list of integers - and I
don't start out knowing how many there are going to be (although typically I
would know a max).  At the end, I know how many there are, and I need to
remake my result to generate an array of the correct size.   Here is an
example from a top coder problem in which I use a linked List

import java.lang.*;
import java.util.*;

public class InterestingDigits{
public int[] digits(int base){
 boolean bad = false;
 LinkedList<Integer> li = new LinkedList<Integer>();
 for(int i=2;i<base;i++){
  bad = false;
  for(int j=i + i;j<base*base*base&&!bad;j+=i){
   int s = 0;
   for(int c=j;c>0;c/=base)
    s+=c%base;
   if(s%i!=0)
    bad=true;
  }
  if(!bad)
   li.add(new Integer(i));
 }
 int c = 0;
 int[] ret = new int[li.size()];
 for(Integer i : li)
  ret[c++] = i.intValue();
 return ret;
}
}

Those last four lines before the return statement are what I have an
objection to.

Is there a function for returning an array subset that I could directly on
an array of type int[] ?    Is there a way to cast directly to an int[] from
a linked list (or any collection) ?   (Note:  I realize that I can generate
an array of type Integer[] easily enough from a collection using
li.toArray(new Integer[0]) but I would need an int[] )