dynamic down-casting in Java

[gusl]

I just ran into problems because of Java's static (non pun intended) typing. Say we have 3 classes: A extends B extends C

We have an object named instance whose class is A.

When instance.inputMatcher(x,y) gets called, we would expect the Java dispatcher to look for the implementation of inputMatcher in this order:
* inside A
* inside B
* inside C

This is indeed what happens if the inputMatcher methods are non-static.

If they are static, however, Java will insist on calling the inputMatcher() from C, because that is the declared type of instance.

Therefore, we need to down-cast. For example:

if (matcherInstance.getClass().equals("A"))
    result = ((A) instance).inputMatcher(x,y);

But this is bad, since it would require me to create a case for each and every subclass of C, in which I down-cast instance to that type.

The code I really want is something like:

result = downcast(instance, instance.getClass()).inputMatcher(a,b);