casting - How to emulate C# as-operator in Java

Question

There are situations, where it is practical to have a type-cast return a null value instead of throwing a ClassCastException. C# has the as operator to do this. Is there something equivalent available in Java so you don't have to explicitly check for the ClassCastException?

Answer 1

Here's an implementation of as, as suggested by @Omar Kooheji:

public static <T> T as(Class<T> clazz, Object o){
    if(clazz.isInstance(o)){
        return clazz.cast(o);
    }
    return null;
}

as(A.class, new Object()) --> null
as(B.class, new B())  --> B