Friday 30 September 2011

What is the difference between the instanceof and getclass, these two are same or not ?

instanceof is a operator, not a function while getClass is a method of java.lang.Object class. Consider a condition where we use
if(o.getClass().getName().equals(“java.lang.Math”)){ }
This method only checks if the classname we have passed is equal to java.lang.Math. The class java.lang.Math is loaded by the bootstrap ClassLoader. This class is an abstract class.This class loader is responsible for loading classes. Every Class object contains a reference to the ClassLoader that defines. getClass() method returns the runtime class of an object. It fetches the java instance of the given fully qualified type name. The code we have written is not necessary, because we should not compare getClass.getName(). The reason behind it is that if the two different class loaders load the same class but for the JVM, it will consider both classes as different classes so, we can’t compare their names. It can only gives the implementing class but can’t compare a interface, but instanceof operator can.
The instanceof operator compares an object to a specified type. We 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. We should try to use instanceof operator in place of getClass() method. Remember instanceof opeator and getClass are not same. Try this example, it will help you to better understand the difference between the two.
Interface one{
}

Class Two implements one {
}
Class Three implements one {
}

public class Test {
public static void main(String args[]) {
one test1 = new Two();
one test2 = new Three();
System.out.println(test1 instanceof one); //true
System.out.println(test2 instanceof one); //true
System.out.println(Test.getClass().equals(test2.getClass())); //false
}
}

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