Question

I am having a problem with this piece of code. The if statement on line 6 is being ignored during execution. I have stepped through the code at this point and the value of the variable file[position] is “subjects.dat”. However, it is skipping over the steps in this and going to the related else statement. Any ideas why??

dialogButton.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
            public void onClick(View v) {
                if (markComplete.isChecked()) {
                    String toDelete;
                    String[] files = fileList();
                    if (files[position] == "subjects.dat") { //the error occurs at this line
                        toDelete = files[position + 1];
                        boolean deleted = deleteFile(toDelete);
                        if (deleted) {
                            dialog.dismiss();
                        } else {
                            // Do nothing
                        }
                    } else {                            
                        toDelete = files[position];                     
                        boolean deleted = deleteFile(toDelete);
                        if (deleted) {
                            dialog.dismiss();
                        } else {
                            //Do nothing
                        }   
                    }

                }                   
            }

Thanks!

Answer 1

You need to use .equals() to compare the actual value of two strings – otherwise you’re checking if they’re the same object.

if (files[position].equals("subjects.dat")) { 
    // do stuff
}