Question

Inside the onDestroy method, whats the correct way to determine if an object was actually initialized before trying to close it/shut it down/etc.

For example, which is better:

protected void onDestroy()
{
    if(tts != null)
    {
        tts.shutdown();
    }

    if(dbWord != null)
    {
        dbWord.close();
    }

    super.onDestroy();
}

or this:

protected void onDestroy()
{
    if(tts instanceof  null)
    {
        tts.shutdown();
    }

    if(dbWord instanceof TextToSpeech)
    {
        dbWord.close();
    }

    super.onDestroy();
}

Answer 1

Use != instead of instanceOf to check if a variable was initialized. instanceOf performs additional type checking which you do not need in this case.