How to find out whether an object can be converted into a Long?

Question

Hi,
I am facing a problem which can be summarized by the following. Let's imagine the following method:
public static int MyCompare(Object anyObj) throws Exception {
    Long X = new Long(3);
    if (anyObj "can be converted into a Long") {
        Long MyConv = anyObj;
        return X.compareTo(MyConv);
    } else {
        throw new Exception("No success");
}My issues are i) that I don't know how to write the proper test to check whether the anyObj parameter can be conveted into a Long and ii) How do I convert anyObj into a Long properly?
The method should not return an Exception in the following cases:
int a1 = 33;
long a2 = 44;
MyCompare(a1);
MyCompare(a2);Can anyone help? Thanks !
J.

Answer 1

Hi,
I have tried to test the suggestion with the following code:
public class MainLong {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int i = 33;
        long j = 44;
        Long k = new Long(55);
        String l = "Trulu";
        System.out.println(MyCompare(i));
        System.out.println(MyCompare(j));
        System.out.println(MyCompare(k));
        System.out.println(MyCompare(l));
    public static int MyCompare(Object inObj) {
        Long Dummy = new Long(30);
        if (inObj instanceof Long) {
            Long Temp = (Long) inObj;
            return Dummy.compareTo(Temp);
        } else {
            return Integer.MIN_VALUE;
}and I got the following output:
-2147483648
-1
-1
-2147483648which is all fine except for the call with an int, it should return -1.
The above are example of objects which can be passed as a parameter to the function. I bet I should test for (anyObj instanceof INTEGER), correct?
Thanks,
J.