Question

What is the advantage of using an Enum class to compare something. What is the disadvantage of :

public static final String TRUE = "true";
public static final String FALSE = "false";

public void method1(){

    if(TRUE.equals(inputString)){
        //do some logic
    }
    else if(FALSE.equals(inputString)){
        //do some other logic
    }
}

Why is it recommended to use Enum instead of String in the example?

Answer 1

One important reason is that with the enum, you know the value is either TRUE or FALSE; it can’t be anything else. But the String can have any value at all, so you have to check for that. This makes code both simpler and easier to understand.

Another is that you can compare enum elements with ==, but you have to use a relatively slow equals() call to compare String objects.