Any reason to prefer getClass over instanceof when generating equals

Question

I m using Eclipse to generate  equals   and  hashCode    and there is an option labeled  Use  instanceof  to compare types    The default is for this option to be unchecked and use  getClass   to compare types   Is there any reason I should prefer  getClass   over instanceof   Without using instanceof   if  obj    null    return false  if  getClass      obj getClass      return false    Using instanceof   if  obj    null    return false  if    obj instanceof MyClass     return false    I usually check the instanceof option  and then go in and remove the  if  obj    null   check   It is redundant since null objects will always fail instanceof    Is there any reason that s a bad idea

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Both methods have their problems     If the subclass changes the identity  then you need to compare their actual classes   Otherwise  you violate the symmetric property   For instance  different types of Persons should not be considered equivalent  even if they have the same name   However  some subclasses don t change identity and these need to use instanceof   For instance  if we have a bunch of immutable Shape objects  then a Rectangle with length and width of 1 should be equal to the unit Square   In practice  I think the former case is more likely to be true   Usually  subclassing is a fundamental part of your identity and being exactly like your parent except you can do one little thing does not make you equal

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Angelika Langers Secrets of equals gets into that with a long and detailed discussion for a few common and well-known examples  including by Josh Bloch and Barbara Liskov  discovering a couple of problems in most of them  She also gets into the instanceof vs getClass  Some quote from it  Conclusions Having dissected the four arbitrarily chosen examples of implementations of equals     what do we conclude  First of all  there are two substantially different ways of performing the check for type match in an implementation of equals     A class can allow mixed-type comparison between super- and subclass objects by means of the instanceof operator  or a class can treat objects of different type as non-equal by means of the getClass   test  The examples above illustrated nicely that implementations of equals   using getClass   are generally more robust than those implementations using instanceof   The instanceof test is correct only for final classes or if at least method equals   is final in a superclass  The latter essentially implies that no subclass must extend the superclass s state  but can only add functionality or fields that are irrelevant for the object s state and behavior  such as transient or static fields  Implementations using the getClass   test on the other hand always comply to the equals   contract  they are correct and robust  They are  however  semantically very different from implementations that use the instanceof test  Implementations using getClass   do not allow comparison of sub- with superclass objects  not even when the subclass does not add any fields and would not even want to override equals     Such a  quot trivial quot  class extension would for instance be the addition of a debug-print method in a subclass defined for exactly this  quot trivial quot  purpose  If the superclass prohibits mixed-type comparison via the getClass   check  then the trivial extension would not be comparable to its superclass  Whether or not this is a problem fully depends on the semantics of the class and the purpose of the extension

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It depends if you consider if a subclass of a given class is equals to its parent   class LastName             class FamilyName extends LastName            here I would use  instanceof   because I want a LastName to be compared to FamilyName  class Organism      class Gorilla extends Organism       here I would use  getClass   because the class already says that the two instances are not equivalent

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The reason to use getClass is to ensure the symmetric property of the equals contract  From equals  JavaDocs      It is symmetric  for any non-null   reference values x and y  x equals y    should return true if and only if   y equals x  returns true    By using instanceof  it s possible to not be symmetric  Consider the example  Dog extends Animal  Animal s equals does an instanceof check of Animal  Dog s equals does an instanceof check of Dog  Give Animal a and Dog d  with other fields the same    a equals d  -- gt  true d equals a  -- gt  false   This violates the symmetric property   To strictly follow equal s contract  symmetry must be ensured  and thus the class needs to be the same

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Josh Bloch favors your approach      The reason that I favor the instanceof approach is that when you use the getClass approach  you have the restriction that objects are only equal to other objects of the same class  the same run time type  If you extend a class and add a couple of innocuous methods to it  then check to see whether some object of the subclass is equal to an object of the super class  even if the objects are equal in all important aspects  you will get the surprising answer that they aren t equal  In fact  this violates a strict interpretation of the Liskov substitution principle  and can lead to very surprising behavior  In Java  it s particularly important because most of the collections  HashTable  etc   are based on the equals method  If you put a member of the super class in a hash table as the key and then look it up using a subclass instance  you won t find it  because they are not equal    See also this SO answer   Effective Java chapter 3 also covers this

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instanceof works for instences of the same class or its subclasses     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    ArryaList and RoleList are both instanceof List  While   getClass      o getClass   will be  true only if both objects   this and o   belongs to exactly the same class   So depending on what you need to compare you could use one or the other    If your logic is   One objects is equals to other only if they are both the same class  you should go for the  equals   which I think is most of the cases

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Correct me if I am wrong  but getClass   will be useful when you want to make sure your instance is NOT a subclass of the class you are comparing with  If you use instanceof in that situation you can NOT know that because   class A      class B extends A      Object oA   new A    Object oB   new B     oA instanceof A   gt  true oA instanceof B   gt  false oB instanceof A   gt  true     lt                  HERE oB instanceof B   gt  true  oA getClass   equals A class    gt  true oA getClass   equals B class    gt  false oB getClass   equals A class    gt  false     lt                HERE oB getClass   equals B class    gt  true

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If you want to ensure only that class will match then use getClass        If you want to match subclasses then instanceof is needed   Also  instanceof will not match against a null but is safe to compare against a null   So you don t have to null check it   if      obj instanceof MyClass      return false

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If you use instanceof  making your equals implementation final will preserve the symmetry contract of the method  x equals y     y equals x   If final seems restrictive  carefully examine your notion of object equivalence to make sure that your overriding implementations fully maintain the contract established by the Object class

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Actually instanceof check where an object belongs to some hierarchy or not  ex  Car object belongs to Vehical class  So  new Car   instance of Vehical  returns true  And  new Car   getClass   equals Vehical class   return false  though Car object belongs to Vehical class but it s categorized as a separate type

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This is something of a religious debate  Both approaches have their problems    Use instanceof and you can never add significant members to subclasses  Use getClass and you violate the Liskov substitution principle    Bloch has another relevant piece of advice in Effective Java Second Edition    Item 17  Design and document for inheritance or prohibit it

[java] Any reason to prefer getClass() over instanceof when generating .equals()?

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