Downcasting in Java

Question

Upcasting is allowed in Java, however downcasting gives a compile error.

The compile error can be removed by adding a cast but would anyway break at the runtime.

Answer 1

To do downcasting in Java, and avoid run-time exceptions, take a reference of the following code:

if (animal instanceof Dog) {
  Dog dogObject = (Dog) animal;
}

Here, Animal is the parent class and Dog is the child class.
instanceof is a keyword that is used for checking if a reference variable is containing a given type of object reference or not.