java assignable instanceof

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java: Class.isInstance vs Class.isAssignableFrom

Let clazz be some Class and obj be some Object .

always the same as

If not, what are the differences?

4 Answers 4

clazz.isAssignableFrom(Foo.class) will be true whenever the class represented by the clazz object is a superclass or superinterface of Foo .

clazz.isInstance(obj) will be true whenever the object obj is an instance of the class clazz .

is always true so long as clazz and obj are nonnull.

Both answers are in the ballpark but neither is a complete answer.

MyClass.class.isInstance(obj) is for checking an instance. It returns true when the parameter obj is non-null and can be cast to MyClass without raising a ClassCastException . In other words, obj is an instance of MyClass or its subclasses.

MyClass.class.isAssignableFrom(Other.class) will return true if MyClass is the same as, or a superclass or superinterface of, Other . Other can be a class or an interface. It answers true if Other can be converted to a MyClass .

A little code to demonstrate:

I think the result for those two should always be the same. The difference is that you need an instance of the class to use isInstance but just the Class object to use isAssignableFrom .

For brevity, we can understand these two APIs like below:

X.class.isAssignableFrom(Y.class)

If X and Y are the same class, or X is Y 's super class or super interface, return true, otherwise, false.

X.class.isInstance(y)

Say y is an instance of class Y , if X and Y are the same class, or X is Y 's super class or super interface, return true, otherwise, false.

So you are saying isAssignableFrom takes class and isInstance takes instance. That is the only difference? – Varun May 24, 2022 at 6:03

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Java instanceof Operator

Java oop (ii).

Java Inheritance

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Java Tutorials

In this tutorial, you will learn about Java instanceof operator in detail with the help of examples.

The instanceof operator in Java is used to check whether an object is an instance of a particular class or not.

Its syntax is

Here, if objectName is an instance of className , the operator returns true . Otherwise, it returns false .

Example: Java instanceof

In the above example, we have created a variable name of the String type and an object obj of the Main class.

Here, we have used the instanceof operator to check whether name and obj are instances of the String and Main class respectively. And, the operator returns true in both cases.

Note : In Java, String is a class rather than a primitive data type. To learn more, visit Java String .

Java instanceof during Inheritance

We can use the instanceof operator to check if objects of the subclass is also an instance of the superclass. For example,

In the above example, we have created a subclass Dog that inherits from the superclass Animal . We have created an object d1 of the Dog class.

Inside the print statement, notice the expression,

Here, we are using the instanceof operator to check whether d1 is also an instance of the superclass Animal .

Java instanceof in Interface

The instanceof operator is also used to check whether an object of a class is also an instance of the interface implemented by the class. For example,

In the above example, the Dog class implements the Animal interface. Inside the print statement, notice the expression,

Here, d1 is an instance of Dog class. The instanceof operator checks if d1 is also an instance of the interface Animal .

Note : In Java, all the classes are inherited from the Object class. So, instances of all the classes are also an instance of the Object class.

In the previous example, if we check,

The result will be true .

Sorry about that.

Coming in Java 16: Pattern Matching for instanceof

A deceptively simple feature covers quite a few interesting use cases

In this post, we’ll go over a new feature coming to Java 16 that brings a lot of change, despite how simple it might look at first glance.

Historically when we’ve used the instanceof operator, it’s been up to the developer to perform the inevitable cast when the type check is true. Starting in Java 16, we’ll be able to let Java perform the cast for us! This feature was in preview for Java 14 and Java 15 and will be officially released in Java 16 (meaning we can use it without having to opt-in via a compiler flag).

The Main Use Case - Before Java 16

First, let’s go over how we check the type of an object and then use that object without the new feature.

In this specific case, we check to make sure that someObject is an instance of String , and if it is, we manually cast someObject to a String , and put it in a new local variable called someString . That works fine, and if you’ve been using Java for a while, you’ve probably written something like this yourself, or have run into code that does this.

This cast is commonly the very first thing done after the instanceof check, so why not optimize the syntax around that a bit?

Now With Pattern Matching

Now we can define a local variable ( someString ) that is automatically cast to the type we’re checking against ( String ) if and only if the instanceof check is true.

How great is that? We’ve avoided that ugly manual cast when performing a type check!

There are a couple of scoping rules to keep in mind when working with type patterns. First, someString in this case is only in scope for the if block. Once we reach the end of that block, we can’t refer to someString any more.

The second thing to keep in mind is that the variable we define is essentially a local variable. This means we can’t shadow another variable of the same name in the local scope. For example:

In that case we can’t shadow our local someString with another someString defined in our pattern match. We can, however, shadow a field in our class:

These scoping rules initially struck me as a bit counterintuitive but since I try not to shadow variables, I figure I’ll get used to it.

That Seems Simple. Is That It?

No! We can do all sorts of things with patern matching for instanceof.

For example, since someString is now defined, we can write conditional tests against it without having to define another nested if statement. In this case, checking that our String starts with “Awesome”:

If all we wanted to do was to test that someObject is a String that starts with “Awesome”, we could write that like this, again taking advantage of pattern matching.

This is a much simpler version of what we would have had to do before, where we would have had an ugly manual cast:

Think of how much nicer our equals methods are going to look! Let’s rewrite the equals method on java.lang.Integer :

What a difference! Now the code is concise and intuitive.

What’s Next?

There is talk about extending pattern matching to switches (both statements and expressions) and to destructuring record classes (a nice feature in Kotlin with data classes). Those all sound pretty exciting, but I’d settle for being able to negate instanceof directly - !instanceof intead of !(t instanceOf S)

Do you have a place in your code where you think pattern matching for instanceof will come in handy? Let me know!

The Java Tutorials have been written for JDK 8. Examples and practices described in this page don't take advantage of improvements introduced in later releases and might use technology no longer available. See Java Language Changes for a summary of updated language features in Java SE 9 and subsequent releases. See JDK Release Notes for information about new features, enhancements, and removed or deprecated options for all JDK releases.

Equality, Relational, and Conditional Operators

The equality and relational operators.

The equality and relational operators determine if one operand is greater than, less than, equal to, or not equal to another operand. The majority of these operators will probably look familiar to you as well. Keep in mind that you must use " == ", not " = ", when testing if two primitive values are equal.

The following program, ComparisonDemo , tests the comparison operators:

The Conditional Operators

The && and || operators perform Conditional-AND and Conditional-OR operations on two boolean expressions. These operators exhibit "short-circuiting" behavior, which means that the second operand is evaluated only if needed.

The following program, ConditionalDemo1 , tests these operators:

Another conditional operator is ?: , which can be thought of as shorthand for an if-then-else statement (discussed in the Control Flow Statements section of this lesson). This operator is also known as the ternary operator because it uses three operands. In the following example, this operator should be read as: "If someCondition is true , assign the value of value1 to result . Otherwise, assign the value of value2 to result ."

The following program, ConditionalDemo2 , tests the ?: operator:

Because someCondition is true, this program prints "1" to the screen. Use the ?: operator instead of an if-then-else statement if it makes your code more readable; for example, when the expressions are compact and without side-effects (such as assignments).

The Type Comparison Operator instanceof

The instanceof operator compares an object to a specified type. You can use it to test if an object is an instance of a class, an instance of a subclass, or an instance of a class that implements a particular interface.

The following program, InstanceofDemo , defines a parent class (named Parent ), a simple interface (named MyInterface ), and a child class (named Child ) that inherits from the parent and implements the interface.

When using the instanceof operator, keep in mind that null is not an instance of anything.

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❮ Java Keywords

Check whether an object is an instance of a specific class:

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Definition and Usage

The instanceof keyword checks whether an object is an instance of a specific class or an interface.

The instanceof keyword compares the instance with type. The return value is either true or false .

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The instanceof operator and isInstance() method both are used for checking the class of the object. But the main difference comes when we want to check the class of objects dynamically then isInstance() method will work. There is no way we can do this by instanceof operator.

The isInstance method is equivalent to instanceof operator. The method is used in case of objects are created at runtime using reflection. General practice says if the type is to be checked at runtime then use the isInstance method otherwise instanceof operator can be used.

The instanceof operator and isInstance() method both return a boolean value. isInstance() method is a method of class Class in java while instanceof is an operator.

Consider an Example:

Output:

Now if we want to check the class of the object at run time, then we must use isInstance() method.

Note: instanceof operator throws compile-time error(Incompatible conditional operand types) if we check object with other classes which it doesn’t instantiate.

Output :

new operator vs newInstance() method in Java
Reflections in Java

This article is contributed by Gaurav Miglani . If you like GeeksforGeeks and would like to contribute, you can also write an article using write.geeksforgeeks.org or mail your article to [email protected]. See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks main page and help other Geeks. Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the topic discussed above.

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COMMENTS

java
In other words, instanceof operator checks if the left object is same or subclass of right class, while isAssignableFrom checks if we can assign object of the parameter class (from) to the reference of the class on which the method is called. Note that both of these consider the actual instance not the reference type.
java: Class.isInstance vs Class.isAssignableFrom
MyClass.class.isInstance (obj) is for checking an instance. It returns true when the parameter obj is non-null and can be cast to MyClass without raising a ClassCastException. In other words, obj is an instance of MyClass or its subclasses. MyClass.class.isAssignableFrom (Other.class) will return true if MyClass is the same as, or a superclass ...
Class.isInstance vs Class.isAssignableFrom and instanceof
In a compiled class file, they utilize different opcodes: The instanceof keyword corresponds to the instanceof opcode. Both the isInstance and isAssignableFrom methods will use the invokevirtual opcode. In the JVM Instruction Set, the instanceof opcode has a value of 193, and it has a two-byte operand: instanceof indexbyte1 indexbyte2.
Pattern Matching for instanceof in Java 14
1. Overview. In this quick tutorial, we'll continue our series on Java 14 by taking a look at Pattern Matching for instanceof which is another new preview feature included with this version of the JDK. In summary, JEP 305 aims to make the conditional extraction of components from objects much simpler, concise, readable and secure.
Pattern Matching for instanceof
A destructuring, extracting either the length and width or the radius from the Shape object. Pattern matching enables you to remove the conversion step by changing the second operand of the instanceof operator with a type pattern, making your code shorter and easier to read: public static double getPerimeter (Shape shape) throws ...
Java instanceof (With Examples)
The instanceof operator is also used to check whether an object of a class is also an instance of the interface implemented by the class. For example, In the above example, the Dog class implements the Animal interface. Inside the print statement, notice the expression, Here, d1 is an instance of Dog class. The instanceof operator checks if d1 ...
Coming in Java 16: Pattern Matching for instanceof
2021-01-12 Todd Ginsberg. In this post, we'll go over a new feature coming to Java 16 that brings a lot of change, despite how simple it might look at first glance. Historically when we've used the instanceof operator, it's been up to the developer to perform the inevitable cast when the type check is true. Starting in Java 16, we'll be ...
Equality, Relational, and Conditional Operators (The Java™ Tutorials
This beginner Java tutorial describes fundamentals of programming in the Java programming language ... this operator should be read as: "If someCondition is true, assign the value of value1 to result. Otherwise, assign the value of value2 to result." The following program ... The instanceof operator compares an object to a specified type. You ...
Java instanceof Keyword
Definition and Usage. The instanceof keyword checks whether an object is an instance of a specific class or an interface. The instanceof keyword compares the instance with type. The return value is either true or false. Read more about objects in our Java Classes/Objects Tutorial. Java Keywords.
instanceof operator vs isInstance() Method in Java
The isInstance method is equivalent to instanceof operator. The method is used in case of objects are created at runtime using reflection. General practice says if the type is to be checked at runtime then use the isInstance method otherwise instanceof operator can be used. The instanceof operator and isInstance () method both return a boolean ...
Java instanceof
The java instanceof operator is used to test whether the object is an instance of the specified type (class or subclass or interface).. The instanceof in java is also known as type comparison operator because it compares the instance with type. It returns either true or false. If we apply the instanceof operator with any variable that has null value, it returns false.