Help with strings

[true steeple]

Hey guys, so I'm trying to run a program, and it wouldn't work if I used "s1 == s2;" (where s1 and s2 are strings). I need to use "s1.equals(s2);". Can somebody tell me the difference between the two?

[lucid musk]

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[cold jewel]

The main difference is that == is used for reference comparison

But .equals is used for content operation

[lucid musk]

Looks like you're having some trouble comparing strings, check out this stackoverflow question for help.

[true steeple]

So like it checks if the address of both the strings is same?

[cold jewel]

Yes

You can test it by doing this trick

String s1 = "HELLO";

    String s2 = "HELLO";

    String s3 =  new String("HELLO");


    System.out.println(s1 == s2); 

    System.out.println(s1 == s3); 

System.out.println(s1.equals(s2)); System.out.println(s1.equals(s3));

s3 and s1 content is same when we use .equal it will return true

But s3 have new string object with new memory of string HELLO so when you do s1 == s3 it will return false

[true steeple]

so like what exactly does an address mean?

[cold jewel]

Address means the memory which the operating system assigned to store the variable

When we use new keyword it creates new memory for it

[true steeple]

Oh okay, thank you so much!

[lucid musk]

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