Finalizing in JDK 16 - Pattern matching for instanceof

[Dan Smith]

> On Sep 9, 2020, at 11:29 AM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> Gavin points out another corner case here: when the LHS is the `null` literal:
> 
>     if (null instanceof String s) { ... }
> 
> Since this is also in the "stupid question" category, it is reasonable to outlaw it, at least when there's a pattern on the RHS.  

One thing to be careful of with "stupid question" errors is that sometimes stupid questions can be useful for experimentation. For example, it's nice that I can go to jshell and see what 'null instance String' does without getting my hand slapped.

(I don't think there's a bright line between stupid questions that should be disallowed and those that should are useful. It's a judgement call.)