Question

I am trying to get a boolean method to return true or false on wether two arrayLists are equal to each other. The arraysLists are array and array1. The user inputs them. Right now here is the code that I thought would work:

public boolean equals(){
//if both are equal return true, else false
boolean test = false;
for(int i = 0; i < array1.size() && !test; i++){
    if(array1.get(i) == (array.get(i))){
        test = true;
    }       
}
return test;
  }

except even when all the arrayLists numbers match the other arrayLists numbers, it returns false.

Answer 1

You don’t need to overwrite the equals method, as there is one already provided for lists that does exactly what you need.

If you insist of writing it yourself there is a simple error in your code.
Because you initialize test to be false, “&& !test” lets your loop exist right at the start.

The correct version would be:

public boolean equals(){
if(array.size()!=array1.size) return false; // test for different length
for(int i = 0; i < array1.size(); i++){
    if(!array1.get(i).equals(array.get(i))){
        return false;
    }       
 }
 return true;
}