Re: Map question

From:
"Mike Schilling" <mscottschilling@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Tue, 1 Jun 2010 18:55:09 -0700
Message-ID:
<hu4dm1$vm5$1@news.eternal-september.org>
"Robert Klemme" <shortcutter@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:86krebFekoU1@mid.individual.net...

On 31.05.2010 21:58, Mike Schilling wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

On Mon, 31 May 2010, Robert Klemme wrote:

On 31.05.2010 18:57, Tom Anderson wrote:

On Mon, 31 May 2010, Lew wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

if ((obj == null) || !(obj instanceof SearchResultHotels)) return
false;


The '(obj == null)' clause is superfluous.


Good point.

My brain, for some reason, has a hard time remembering that:

SearchResultHotels x = (SearchResultHotels)null;

is okay but:

null instanceof SearchResultHotels

is false.


You just need to remember that null does not have a type. At least
that's what helped me to get this straight. :-)


Yes, when i think about it, it's all perfectly clear. But i get it
wrong when i'm not thinking about it.


Me too. Especially since the usage

     if (x instanceof Type)
     {
             Type t = (Type)x;
             ...

is so common. The instanceof check (among other things) avoids a cast
failure, but the cast would work perfectly well if x were null.


But then you'd get a NPE as soon as you try to invoke any method on the
reference - so the idiom totally makes sense and the instanceof check
avoids a cast failure *and* a NPE.


Assuming you're going to invoke a method on it, rather than pass it as a
parameter to something that does a null check (or accepts nulls). But the
current behavior is still the most useful one 80-90% of the time, I'd say.

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