Question

Been racking my brains with this for ages now and it’s just stumped me.

I have a simple string comparison:

public static void login() 
{
    isIncorrectInput = true;

    while (isIncorrectInput) 
    {
        System.out.print("Please enter your password: ");
        password = readLine();

        if (password.equals(currentUser.password))
        {
            isIncorrectInput = false;
            System.out.print("Successful login!");
        } 
        else 
        {
            System.out.print("Incorrect password. Please try again.\n");
        }
    }
}

So, ‘password’ is a String variable, currentUser is a instance of a User object which has a password property.

I’ve tried switching which object the method is called on: doesn’t work. Tried ignoring the case: doesn’t work. The passwords are DEFINITELY the same, I’ve stepped through it countless times, it’s just returning false when it should be returning true.

What am I doing wrong!!?

Thanks in advance guys.

Answer 1

Without seeing readLine()’s body I can’t be sure, but it is probably a whitespace issue. Try doing a trim() on the input before doing the comparison.