What is difference between == and equals() method for comparing
Objects in Java is one of the classical Interview Questions which appears now
and then on many interviews. This question is mostly asked in conjunction with String because comparing String using == and equals() method returns different results. I have often seen as
along with other popular String question e.g. StringBuffer vs StringBuilder, Why String is final etc. Java
is a pure object oriented language and every object has one state and location
in the memory and equals () and == are related with the state and location of
the object, now in this article will try to understand this concept and
difference between == and equals method in Java.
What
is equals method and == operator in Java
Both
equals() method and == operator is used to compare two objects in Java. == is
an operator and equals() is method. But == operator compare reference or memory
location of objects in heap, whether they point to same location or
not .whenever we create any object using the operator new it
will create new memory location for that object. So we use == operator to check
memory location or address of two objects are same or not. And when we talk
about equals() method main
purpose is two compare the state of two objects or contents of the object. But
there is one relation between this two isdefault implementation of equals() method work
like == means it will check the memory reference of the object if they point to
same location then two objects are equals and it is defined in Object
class .as we know java.lang.Object class is parent for every other object so default implementation
is common for every object but if we want to override the method and
want to give own implementation for checking the equality for two
objects we can do, and most of the Java classes have their own
implementation for equals method where they check the contents of the object .
For
example java.lang.String class override the equals() and hashcode method and
in overridden method it will check that two string contains same value or
character if yes then they are equals other wise not equal.
Difference between ==
and equals method in Java
Now
we know what is equals method, how it works and What is equality operator (==)
and How it compare objects, its time to compare them. Here is some worth noting
difference between equals() method and == operator
in Java:
· First difference between
them is, equals() is a method defined inside the java.lang.Object class and == is one type of operator
and you can compare both primitive and objects using equality operator in Java.
· Second difference
between equals and == operator is that, == is used to check reference or memory
address of the objects whether they point to same location or not, and equals() method is used to compare the contents of the object e.g.
in case of comparing String its
characters, in case of Integer its there numeric values etc. You can define
your own equals method for domain object as per business rules e.g. two Employes objects are equal if
there EmployeeId is same.
· Third difference between
equals and == operator is that, You can not change the behavior of == operator
but we can override equals() method and define the
criteria for the objects equality.
Let
clear all these differences between equals and == operator using one Java
example :
String s1=new String("hello");
String s2=new String("hello");
String s2=new String("hello");
Here
we have created two string s1 and s2 now will use == and equals () method to
compare these two String to check
whetherthey are equal or not.
First
we use equality operator == for comparison which
only returns true if both reference variable are pointing to same object.
if(s1==s2) {
System.out.printlln("s1==s2 is TRUE");
} else{
System.out.println("s1==s2 is FALSE");
}
System.out.printlln("s1==s2 is TRUE");
} else{
System.out.println("s1==s2 is FALSE");
}
Output
of this comparison is FALSE because we have created two objects which have
different location in heap so == compare their reference or address
location and return false. Now if we use
equals method to check their equivalence what will be the output
if(s1.equals(s2)) {
System.out.println("s1.equals(s2) is TRUE");
} else {
System.out.println("s1.equals(s2) is FALSE");
}
Output
of this comparison is TRUE because java.lang.String class has already overridden the equals() method of Object class and check that contents are same or
not because both have same value hello so they are equal according to String
classequals() method .
Point
to remember:
If
you have not overridden equals() method in a user defined object, it
will only compare the reference or memory address, as defined in default equals() method of java.lang.Object class and return true only if both reference variable
points to same object. So in a user defined class, both equals() and == operator behave
similarly but that may not be logically correct and that’s why we should always
define the equivalence criteria for custom or domain objects.
That’s
all on difference between equals() method and == operator in Java. Both can
compare objects for equality but equals()is used for logical and business logic
comparison while == mostly for object reference comparison in Java.
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