Inigo Surguy presents< an implementation of Visitor pattern based on reflection. I found useful a slight modification of it, that allows for visiting not only the narrowest type, but every type possible , based on the visitAll flag: ReflectiveVisitor.java. This functionality comes in quite handy for tasks such as, for instance, validation. For example, if one has a complex class hierarchy (especially with multiple< inheritance) and different types have different requirements for it to be valid, and a concrete instance may implement a number of those, these validations can be well separated out.

See also:

1. Visiting Collection elements
2. Depth-first polymorphism