What is the difference between instanceof and Class.isAssignableFrom(…)?

Question

Which of the following is better?

a instanceof B

or

B.class.isAssignableFrom(a.getClass())

The only difference that I know of is, when 'a' is null, the first returns false, while the second throws an exception. Other than that, do they always give the same result?

Answer 1

While applying instanceof, you require to apprehend the class of B at compile-time and instanceof can solely be applied with reference types, not primitive types. 

While using isAssignableFrom() it can be powerful and vary during runtime and isAssignableFrom() can be done with any class objects:

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