如何在不创建新的情况下返回 object class？

Question

I have hierarchy of few classes: Organism -> Fox,Antelope,Wolf

And i want to create a method that will define what is the class of the given object, without returning new instance of this object.

Something like this:

public Organism defineOrganismClass(Organism o) {
        if (o instanceof Antelope) {
            return ...;
        }if (o instanceof Fox) {
            return ...;
        }            //and so on
}

Is there a way to do it?

Answer 1

Yes, you can return Class<? extends Organism> Class<? extends Organism> instead, eg Fox.class . This will give you the class definition, but no instance. You would not need the if statements, just return o.getClass() .

It does of course beg the question what you then want to do with that class. Maybe you want to define an enum instead, eg enum OrganismType { ANTELOPE, FOX } which is easier to operate on.