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downcasting doubt

 
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there is no use of down casting right?

Dog dog = (Dog)animal;
it compiles but fails at execution time,so there is no use of downcasting am i right.
 
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This wouldn't fail at runtime:)
 
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This is an interesting observation. Its ok at compile time, but you will always get a class cast exception at runtime.
 
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This will not fail at runtime.
Can you please provide the actual code?
 
KrishnaPrasad raghavan
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Harpreet Singh janda wrote : This will not fail at runtime. Can you please provide the actual code?



You are right. I meant the following won't run.

Given this code.



This will compile fine but will throw a class cast exception during runtime.

But the following will compile fine



superClass reference is pointing to the SubClass object. So the line



Compile and runs fine.
 
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Since the actual object is SubClass (Super class reference variable holds Sub class instance). you can cast it.
 
Harpreet Singh janda
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Super class can be used to hold a reference of subclass and the underlying object is always the subclass (if super class is having reference to subclass). A superclass can have multiple subclasses so at compile time it will be acceptable if you are having a superclass object that is pointing to first subclass and the you are casting that superclass object to 2nd subclass.
But this will fail at run time as when jvm will try to cast the underlying object to 2nd subclass, it will found that both the objects are different so it will through ClassCastException.
 
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