How's it going, guys?

Intro

Today, l'd like to share with you how to understand these three amazing methods. They look similar and we're going to dive into them, in order to check the difference among them.

Goal

The goal of this article is to understand the differences among them and allow you to pick the best option for your needs.

Introduction

In Ruby, there are often a bunch of different ways to ways to achieve the same or similar results. Sometimes, it's just a matter of preference or readability of your code.

This is not common in other programming languages, that's why some newcomers might feel uncomfortable.

The methods

Anyway, about talk these three methods. They all come from the same class: Object and all of them have similar goals, which is to check the type of the current object.

They all return a boolean value (true or false).

We're going to check the difference later. Just bear with me.

The is_a? method

Syntax: parameter.is_a?(Class) Parameter: The value that it is going to be checked Method: is_a? Class: The class that it is going to be compared with Return: It returns a boolean value (true or false)

The goal of the is_a? method is to check if self (The current object) belongs to the compared class or to their ancestors.

Let's check some examples with an integer value:

irb(main):002:0> 20.is_a? Integer
=> true
irb(main):003:0> 20.is_a? Numeric
=> true
irb(main):004:0> 20.is_a? Object
=> true

Now, more examples, but with a string value this time:

irb(main):005:0> "alexandre calaca".is_a? String
=> true
irb(main):006:0> "alexandre calaca".is_a? Object
=> true

The instance_of? method

Syntax: parameter.instance_of?(Class) Parameter: The value that it is going to be checked Method: instance_of? Class: The class that it is going be compared with Return: It returns a boolean value (true or false)

The goal of the instance_of? method is to check if self (The current object) is an instance of the given class. The instance_of? method doesn't return true if compared with the class ancestors.

Let's check some examples with a float value:

irb(main):007:0> (2.4).class
=> Float
irb(main):008:0> (2.4).instance_of? Float
=> true
irb(main):009:0> (2.4).instance_of? Numeric
=> false
irb(main):010:0> (2.4).instance_of? Object
=> false

Now, let's use an array for testing.

irb(main):014:0> [1, 0, 2, 4].class
=> Array
irb(main):015:0> [1, 0, 2, 4].instance_of? Array
=> true
irb(main):016:0> [1, 0, 2, 4].instance_of? Object
=> false

The kind_of? method

Syntax: parameter.kind_of?(Class) Parameter: The value that it is going to be checked Method: kind_of? Class: The class that it is going to be compared with Return: It returns a boolean value (true or false)

The kind_of? and is_a? methods are the same.

Let's check the examples anyway:

irb(main):014:0> [1, 0, 2, 4].class
=> Array
irb(main):015:0> [1, 0, 2, 4].instance_of? Array
=> true
irb(main):016:0> [1, 0, 2, 4].instance_of? Object
=> false
irb(main):017:0> [21, 40, 12, 34].is_a? Array
=> true
irb(main):018:0> [21, 40, 12, 34].kind_of? Array
=> true
irb(main):019:0> [21, 40, 12, 34].is_a? Object
=> true
irb(main):020:0> [21, 40, 12, 34].kind_of? Object
=> true
irb(main):021:0> [21, 40, 12, 34].is_a? Integer
=> false
irb(main):022:0> [21, 40, 12, 34].kind_of? Integer
=> false

Summing up:

All the 3 methods:

• Belong to the Object class;
• Require a parameter, which is the value that it is going to be compared with;
• Return a boolean value (true or false);
• Return true if the current object is an instance of the given class;

How about the ancestors of the given class? Here is the difference, the instance_of? method only returns true if self is an instance of the given class, otherwise false.

The is_a? and the kind_of? methods return true if self is an instance of the given class or if the class argument is an ancestor of the singleton class of self (the current object).

Let's check these examples with an integer data type.

irb(main):023:0> 10.is_a? Numeric
=> true
irb(main):024:0> 10.instance_of? Numeric
=> false

Conclusion

In this article, it was possible to understand how the three methods work: is_a?, kind_of? and instance_of?. Besides, we were able to recognize the similarities and the difference among these three Ruby methods.

Hope it was useful.

That's for today. Let me know if you have any questions.

By the way, you help me a lot if you like and/or share this article.