Question

Possible Duplicate:
Questions about Java’s String pool

What’s the difference between the two ways of declaring strings in Java?

String se1 = "java";
String se2 = "java";
System.out.println(se1 == se2); // output true

String str1 = new String("OKAY");
String str2 = new String("OKAY");
System.out.println(str1 == str2); // output false

Answer 1

You should not use == when comparing objects including strings. Generally == compares references, so it return true only of same objects. You should use equals() method instead: str1.equals(str2)

It occasionally works for you in first case because java caches string constants, so "java" in both cases is represented by same instance of String.