You can use
str1.compareTo(str2);
If str1 is lexicographically less than str2, a negative number will be returned, 0 if equal or a positive number if str1 is greater.
E.g.,
"a".compareTo("b"); // returns a negative number, here -1
"a".compareTo("a"); // returns 0
"b".compareTo("a"); // returns a positive number, here 1
"b".compareTo(null); // throws java.lang.NullPointerException
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You can use
str1.compareTo(str2);
If str1 is lexicographically less than str2, a negative number will be returned, 0 if equal or a positive number if str1 is greater.
E.g.,
"a".compareTo("b"); // returns a negative number, here -1
"a".compareTo("a"); // returns 0
"b".compareTo("a"); // returns a positive number, here 1
"b".compareTo(null); // throws java.lang.NullPointerException
If you would like to ignore case you could use the following:
String s = "yip";
String best = "yodel";
int compare = s.compareToIgnoreCase(best);
if(compare < 0){
//-1, --> s is less than best. ( s comes alphabetically first)
}
else if(compare > 0 ){
// best comes alphabetically first.
}
else{
// strings are equal.
}
== tests for reference equality (whether they are the same object).
.equals() tests for value equality (whether they contain the same data).
Objects.equals() checks for null before calling .equals() so you don't have to (available as of JDK7, also available in Guava).
Consequently, if you want to test whether two strings have the same value you will probably want to use Objects.equals().
// These two have the same value
new String("test").equals("test") // --> true
// ... but they are not the same object
new String("test") == "test" // --> false
// ... neither are these
new String("test") == new String("test") // --> false
// ... but these are because literals are interned by
// the compiler and thus refer to the same object
"test" == "test" // --> true
// ... string literals are concatenated by the compiler
// and the results are interned.
"test" == "te" + "st" // --> true
// ... but you should really just call Objects.equals()
Objects.equals("test", new String("test")) // --> true
Objects.equals(null, "test") // --> false
Objects.equals(null, null) // --> true
From the Java Language Specification JLS 15.21.3. Reference Equality Operators == and !=:
While
==may be used to compare references of typeString, such an equality test determines whether or not the two operands refer to the sameStringobject. The result isfalseif the operands are distinctStringobjects, even if they contain the same sequence of characters (§3.10.5, §3.10.6). The contents of two stringssandtcan be tested for equality by the method invocations.equals(t).
You almost always want to use Objects.equals(). In the rare situation where you know you're dealing with interned strings, you can use ==.
From JLS 3.10.5. String Literals:
Moreover, a string literal always refers to the same instance of class
String. This is because string literals - or, more generally, strings that are the values of constant expressions (§15.28) - are "interned" so as to share unique instances, using the methodString.intern.
Similar examples can also be found in JLS 3.10.5-1.
Other Methods To Consider
String.equalsIgnoreCase() value equality that ignores case. Beware, however, that this method can have unexpected results in various locale-related cases, see this question.
String.contentEquals() compares the content of the String with the content of any CharSequence (available since Java 1.5). Saves you from having to turn your StringBuffer, etc into a String before doing the equality comparison, but leaves the null checking to you.
== tests object references, .equals() tests the string values.
Sometimes it looks as if == compares values, because Java does some behind-the-scenes stuff to make sure identical in-line strings are actually the same object.
For example:
String fooString1 = new String("foo");
String fooString2 = new String("foo");
// Evaluates to false
fooString1 == fooString2;
// Evaluates to true
fooString1.equals(fooString2);
// Evaluates to true, because Java uses the same object
"bar" == "bar";
But beware of nulls!
== handles null strings fine, but calling .equals() from a null string will cause an exception:
String nullString1 = null;
String nullString2 = null;
// Evaluates to true
System.out.print(nullString1 == nullString2);
// Throws a NullPointerException
System.out.print(nullString1.equals(nullString2));
So if you know that fooString1 may be null, tell the reader that by writing
System.out.print(fooString1 != null && fooString1.equals("bar"));
The following are shorter, but it’s less obvious that it checks for null:
System.out.print("bar".equals(fooString1)); // "bar" is never null
System.out.print(Objects.equals(fooString1, "bar")); // Java 7 required
From what I have been reading, the compareTo() method returns the difference of the Unicode numerical values of two Strings when they are compared with each other. For instance, the String "hello" when compared with the String "hello" returns an integer value of zero, since they both have exactly the same Unicode characters in them. Based on my understanding of this method, "hello" should return zero when compared to "olleh", because the two Strings have the exact same Unicode characters in them. Instead, though, I am getting integer value of 7 returned to the console. Can someone break this down a bit for me to help me understand it better? Thanks in advance. Here is my code:
String str1 = "hello";String str2 = "olleh";System.out.println(str1.compareTo(str2)); // 7