Question

I’m trying to compare two DataRows in a loop. However, the following if statement doesn’t return true:

if (dt1.Rows[0]['Name'] == dt2.Rows[b]['Name']) {     // This never executes } 

However, if I add .ToString() to the end of each DataRow, the if statement returns true:

if (dt1.Rows[0]['Name'].ToString() == dt2.Rows[b]['Name'].ToString()) {     // This now executes } 

The column ‘Name’ is from the same table/column. So the question is quite simple… What am I doing wrong?

Thanks
Stephen

Answer 1

As itsmatt has said, your first snippet is doing a reference comparison. An alternative to calling ToString is to use Object.Equals:

if (Object.Equals(dt1.Rows[0]['Name'], dt2.Rows[b]['Name'])) {     // stuff } 

The reason for using the static method instead of the instance method is to avoid problems with null references.