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Unit 17: Run-Time Class Mismatch

After taking this unit, students should:

  • Understand the need for narrowing type conversion and type casting when writing code that depends on higher-level abstraction
  • Understand the possibility of encountering run-time errors if typecasting is not done properly.

We have seen in Unit 15 how we can write code that is reusable and general by making our code dependent on types at a higher-level of abstraction. Our main example is the following findLargest method, which takes in an array of objects that support the getArea method, and returns the largest area among these objects.

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// version 0.3
double findLargest(GetAreable[] array) {
  double maxArea = 0;
  for (GetAreable curr : array) {
    double area = curr.getArea();
    if (area > maxArea) {
      maxArea = area;
    }
  }
  return maxArea;
}

The method served our purpose well, but it is NOT a very well-designed method. Just returning the value of the largest area is not as useful as returning the object with the largest area. Once the caller has a reference of the object, the caller can call getArea to find the value of the largest area.

Let's write our findLargest method to find which object has the largest area instead. 

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// version 0.4
GetAreable findLargest(GetAreable[] array) {
  double maxArea = 0;
  GetAreable maxObj = null;
  for (GetAreable curr : array) {
    double area = curr.getArea();
    if (area > maxArea) {
      maxArea = area;
      maxObj = curr;
    }
  }
  return maxObj;
}

Let's see how findLargest can be used:

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GetAreable[] circles = new GetAreable[] {
  new Circle(new Point(1, 1), 2),
  new Circle(new Point(0, 0), 5)
};

GetAreable ga = findLargest(circles);  // ok
Circle c1 = findLargest(circles); // error
Circle c2 = (Circle) findLargest(circles); // ok

The return type of findLargest (version 0.4) is now GetAreable. On Line 6 above, we assign the return object with a compile-time type of GetAreable to ga, which also has GetAreable as its compile-time type. Since the variable ga is of type GetAreable, however, it is not very useful. Recall that GetAreable is an interface with only one method getArea. We cannot use it as a circle.

On Line 7, we try to return the return object to a variable with compile-time type Circle. This line, however, causes a compile-time error. Since Circle <: GetAreable, this is a narrowing type conversion and thus is not allowed (See Unit 12). We will have to make an explicit cast of the result to Circle (on Line 8). Only with casting, our code can compile and we get a reference with a compile-time type of Circle.

Cast Carefully

Typecasting, as we did in Line 8 above, is basically is a way for programmers to ask the compiler to trust that the object returned by findLargest has a run-time type of Circle (or its subtype).

In the snippet above, we can be sure (even prove) that the returned object from findLargest must have a run-time type of Circle since the input variable circles contains only Circle objects.

The need to cast our returned object, however, leads to fragile code. Since the correctness of Line 8 depends on the run-time type, the compiler cannot help us. It is then up to the programmers to not make mistakes.

Consider the following two snippets, which will compile perfectly, but will lead to the program crashing at run-time.

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GetAreable[] circles = new GetAreable[] {
  new Circle(new Point(1, 1), 2),
  new Square(new Point(1, 1), 5)
};

Circle c2 = (Circle) findLargest(circles);

Or

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GetAreable[] circles = new GetAreable[] {
  new Circle(new Point(1, 1), 2),
  new Circle(new Point(1, 1), 5)
};

Square sq = (Square) findLargest(circles);

We will see how to resolve this problem in later units.