What is the difference between and equals

Question

What are the two different cases in which we can use = and equals() in java?

Answer 1

object1.equals(object2) method is used to compare two different objects. This method returns either true or false value.

String x="Welcome to Edureka";

String y="WeLcOmE tO eDurEkA";

System.out.println(x.equals(y));

Output of this code is: False

= is used to compare values of two object references. 

Answer 2

The equals() method compares the "value" inside String instances (on the heap) irrespective if the two object references refer to the same String instance or not. If any two object references of type String refer to the same String instance then great! If the two object references refer to two different String instances it doesn't make a difference. Its the "value" (that is: the contents of the character array) inside each String instance that is being compared.

On the other hand, the "==" operator compares the value of two object references to see whether they refer to the same String instance. If the value of both object references "refer to" the same String instance then the result of the boolean expression would be "true"..duh. If, on the other hand, the value of both object references "refer to" different String instances(even though both String instances have identical "values", that is, the contents of the character arrays of each String instance are the same) the result of the boolean expression would be "false".