Groovy as a list of questions

Question

I came across this piece of code, and it seems to me that it is not needed, is there any reason to do the following

def answers = [] as List 

instead

 def answers = [] 

In groovy, I thought that [] was an empty list, so there is no need to have as List

Answer 1

No, there is no difference, both create ArrayList and List ( java.util.List ) anyway.