Difference between casting to String and String.valueOf

Question

What is the difference between

Object foo = \"something\";
String bar = String.valueOf(foo);

and

Object foo = \"something\"         


        

Answer 1

The first one i.e, String.valueOf returns a string only if the object is a representable type which is a value type or a String.. Else it throws the exception.

In the latter one, you are directly casting which can fail if the object isn't a string.

Online example.

http://ideone.com/p7AGh5