Error on "instanceOf" when checking a subClass

I have a method, that accepts as parameter all classes that extend Persona.Class (Uomo.Class and Donna.Class extend Persona.Class).

public PersonaDecorator(Class <? extends Persona> persona) {            
    }

Inside this method, I need to know if the class sent to the method is Uomo.Class or Donna.Class.

I Thought I could do something like this:

public PersonaDecorator(Class <? extends Persona> persona) {    
    if(persona instanceof Uomo){
        ......
    }       
}

But I get this error: Incompatible conditional operand types Class<capture#1-of ? extends Persona> and Uomo

Thank you

Jon Skeet
people
quotationmark

The instanceof operator tests whether a reference (the left operand) refers to an object which is an instance of the class named on the right operand.

Here, persona will be a reference to an instance of Class, and an instance of Class can never be an instance of Persona. You're testing for an impossible condition, and the compiler is helpfully telling you about that mistake.

I suspect you want Class.isAssignableFrom:

if (Uomo.class.isAssignableFrom(persona))

That would find subclasses of Uomo as well. If you want to test whether it's exactly the Uomo class, you can just use:

if (persona == Uomo.class)

people

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