Why does it return "FALSE"...?

[Rekha Anand]

Hello Forum Members...

I found this piece of code -

public class samp
{
public static void main(String arg[])
{
Byte b1 = new Byte("127");

if(b1.toString() == b1.toString())
System.out.println("True");
else
System.out.println("False");
}
}


This code compiles fine and returns False. I cannot understand..WHY? Please help...

[Jesper de Jong]

When you use the == operator to compare two objects, then Java only returns true if the two operands refer to the exact same object. In this line:

if(b1.toString() == b1.toString())

You are comparing two strings, which are objects, using the == operator. This will only return true if the two strings are the exact same object - it will return false otherwise, even if the two strings contain the same text.

If you want to compare two objects by the content, you should use the equals() method instead of ==:

if(b1.toString().equals(b1.toString()))
[ March 04, 2008: Message edited by: Jesper Young ]