Which is the best way to Compare two documents in Java without any complexity and precise result

Even if both of your documents look the same or even if both contains the same formatted content, a slightly change like the last modified date will result in a failed comparison. JSON documents are more easier to compare but Word documents are binary. The smallest change can change the document completely.

So you have to do it the hard way: Find a library to read the content of the Word files by yourself and check the content of both files specifically.

There were multiple suggestions and answers to my question, thanks for that. The reasons for mismatch in docx file is there in the metadata info, everytime we create a doc/docx file, the timestamp changes. Though i tried to change the timestamp(accessed,modified and created) of both the files to make it same and compare, which didn't work out. The reason is apart from these time stamps, there is a meta info called Zip Modify Date, which isn't visible when we see the file properties. this timestamp i found as one of the reason there was mismatch in hashcode. Also, the base64 encoded strings was different because of the zip timestamp.

So, the options i had to do the comparison were :

1. converting the docx file to xml file
2. Zip the docx file, unzip it and iterate though all the xml files to find  the hashcode and compare the hascodes.(suggeted as of the answers)

"2" was good but it required lot of iterations and unzipping would create lot many folders.

"1" , was straight fwd, as i tried it using external lib -> docx4j , which converted the docx to xml and then i could match the hashcode , it worked.

Convert DOCX to XML file

I had to try different options since i was looking for simplest and not so complex way to compare content and styles of the word document.

Read the files in string and then compare the strings using, you can convert the files in string using stringbuilder or tostring method. InputStream is = new FileInputStream("manifest.mf"); BufferedReader buf = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is));

String line = buf.readLine();
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        
while(line != null){
   sb.append(line).append("\n");
   line = buf.readLine();
}
  

  

String fileAsString = sb.toString(); System.out.println("Contents : " + fileAsString);

string one = "fdgfhdgkifgh";
string two = "fdgfhdgkifgh";

if(one.Equals(two) || one == two ){
//something
}else{
//not compared
}

In Java, you can compare two Strings with string1.equals(string2).

So in your case you need the line newFile.equals(oldFile)