How do I compare strings in Java?

== tests for reference equality (whether they are the same object).

.equals() tests for value equality (whether they are logically "equal").

Objects.equals() checks for null before calling .equals() so you don't have to (available as of JDK7, also available in Guava).

Consequently, if you want to test whether two strings have the same value you will probably want to use Objects.equals().

// These two have the same value
new String("test").equals("test") // --> true 

// ... but they are not the same object
new String("test") == "test" // --> false 

// ... neither are these
new String("test") == new String("test") // --> false 

// ... but these are because literals are interned by 
// the compiler and thus refer to the same object
"test" == "test" // --> true 

// ... string literals are concatenated by the compiler
// and the results are interned.
"test" == "te" + "st" // --> true

// ... but you should really just call Objects.equals()
Objects.equals("test", new String("test")) // --> true
Objects.equals(null, "test") // --> false
Objects.equals(null, null) // --> true

You almost always want to use Objects.equals(). In the rare situation where you know you're dealing with interned strings, you can use ==.

From JLS 3.10.5. String Literals:

Moreover, a string literal always refers to the same instance of class String. This is because string literals - or, more generally, strings that are the values of constant expressions (§15.28) - are "interned" so as to share unique instances, using the method String.intern.

Similar examples can also be found in JLS 3.10.5-1.

Other Methods To Consider

String.equalsIgnoreCase() value equality that ignores case. Beware, however, that this method can have unexpected results in various locale-related cases, see this question.

String.contentEquals() compares the content of the String with the content of any CharSequence (available since Java 1.5). Saves you from having to turn your StringBuffer, etc into a String before doing the equality comparison, but leaves the null checking to you.

== tests object references, .equals() tests the string values.

Sometimes it looks as if == compares values, because Java does some behind-the-scenes stuff to make sure identical in-line strings are actually the same object.

For example:

String fooString1 = new String("foo");
String fooString2 = new String("foo");

// Evaluates to false
fooString1 == fooString2;

// Evaluates to true
fooString1.equals(fooString2);

// Evaluates to true, because Java uses the same object
"bar" == "bar";

But beware of nulls!

== handles null strings fine, but calling .equals() from a null string will cause an exception:

String nullString1 = null;
String nullString2 = null;

// Evaluates to true
System.out.print(nullString1 == nullString2);

// Throws a NullPointerException
System.out.print(nullString1.equals(nullString2));

So if you know that fooString1 may be null, tell the reader that by writing

System.out.print(fooString1 != null && fooString1.equals("bar"));

The following are shorter, but it’s less obvious that it checks for null:

System.out.print("bar".equals(fooString1));  // "bar" is never null
System.out.print(Objects.equals(fooString1, "bar"));  // Java 7 required

The == operator checks to see if the two strings are exactly the same object.

The .equals() method will check if the two strings have the same value.

Strings in Java are immutable. That means whenever you try to change/modify the string you get a new instance. You cannot change the original string. This has been done so that these string instances can be cached. A typical program contains a lot of string references and caching these instances can decrease the memory footprint and increase the performance of the program.

When using == operator for string comparison you are not comparing the contents of the string, but are actually comparing the memory address. If they are both equal it will return true and false otherwise. Whereas equals in string compares the string contents.

So the question is if all the strings are cached in the system, how come == returns false whereas equals return true? Well, this is possible. If you make a new string like String str = new String("Testing") you end up creating a new string in the cache even if the cache already contains a string having the same content. In short "MyString" == new String("MyString") will always return false.

Java also talks about the function intern() that can be used on a string to make it part of the cache so "MyString" == new String("MyString").intern() will return true.

Note: == operator is much faster than equals just because you are comparing two memory addresses, but you need to be sure that the code isn't creating new String instances in the code. Otherwise you will encounter bugs.

String a = new String("foo");
String b = new String("foo");
System.out.println(a == b); // prints false
System.out.println(a.equals(b)); // prints true

Make sure you understand why. It's because the == comparison only compares references; the equals() method does a character-by-character comparison of the contents.

When you call new for a and b, each one gets a new reference that points to the "foo" in the string table. The references are different, but the content is the same.

Yea, it's bad...

== means that your two string references are exactly the same object. You may have heard that this is the case because Java keeps sort of a literal table (which it does), but that is not always the case. Some strings are loaded in different ways, constructed from other strings, etc., so you must never assume that two identical strings are stored in the same location.

Equals does the real comparison for you.

Yes, == is bad for comparing Strings (any objects really, unless you know they're canonical). == just compares object references. .equals() tests for equality. For Strings, often they'll be the same but as you've discovered, that's not guaranteed always.

I agree with the answer from zacherates.

But what you can do is to call intern() on your non-literal strings.

From zacherates example:

// ... but they are not the same object
new String("test") == "test" ==> false 

If you intern the non-literal String equality is true:

new String("test").intern() == "test" ==> true 

== compares object references in Java, and that is no exception for String objects.

For comparing the actual contents of objects (including String), one must use the equals method.

If a comparison of two String objects using == turns out to be true, that is because the String objects were interned, and the Java Virtual Machine is having multiple references point to the same instance of String. One should not expect that comparing one String object containing the same contents as another String object using == to evaluate as true.

.equals() compares the data in a class (assuming the function is implemented). == compares pointer locations (location of the object in memory).

== returns true if both objects (NOT TALKING ABOUT PRIMITIVES) point to the SAME object instance. .equals() returns true if the two objects contain the same data equals() Versus == in Java

That may help you.

== compares the reference value of objects whereas the equals() method present in the java.lang.String class compares the contents of the String object (to another object).