Two identical strings are not identical...

[murphaph]

...apparently. Of course I must be just doing something stupid. Hello all, I'm new to Java and new here too. Hope to get an answer to this;

I've been learning java for a few weeks now and have been lucky enough to get an Internship position but I don't want to keep bothering my boss. I have tried unsuccessfully to figure out what I'm doing wrong but to no avail so here I am!

I'm writing a simple unit test for this app and I want to compare two strings (two MAC addresses actually, one from the real user machine and one from a license file, to decide whether or not to run this app). I am sure the strings are the same, I even converted them to lower case to make sure I wasn't mistaking a digit 0 for a letter o etc. but it wasn't that simple. The code snippet is below;

@Test
public void testNoFeaturesValidAndValidMac() {
String fileName = "test-no-features-valid-mac.lic";
System.out.println("Test no features valid and valid mac found with license file : " + fileName);
assertFalse(instance.checkForFeature("fileReader", new File(licenseFolder, fileName)));
assertFalse(instance.checkForFeature("soundPlayer" , new File(licenseFolder, fileName)));
System.out.println(/*"Mac found in license file is: "+*/instance.checkForMac("MacAddress1", new File(licenseFolder, fileName)).toLowerCase());
System.out.println(/*"Actual machine mac is: " +*/instance.getActualMachineMac().toLowerCase());
System.out.println("Test for equality: "+instance.checkForMac("MacAddress1", new File(licenseFolder, fileName)).equalsIgnoreCase(instance.getActualMach ineMac()));
assertTrue(instance.checkForMac("MacAddress1", new File(licenseFolder, fileName)).equalsIgnoreCase(instance.getActualMach ineMac()));

}

and the output from the test console (javabeans, fwiw) is;

Test no features valid and valid mac found with license file : test-no-features-valid-mac.lic
00242c3b2e24
00242c3b2e24
Test for equality: false

Is this not the right way to compare these strings? I know I shouldn't use == like C++ etc. Thanks for your input.

[Fubarable]

Could there be extra non-visualized characters present such as trailing spaces or new line? Have you tried trimming both Strings first?

[murphaph]

No Fubarable, haven't tried that. Any suggestions on a suitable method?

[murphaph]

Ignore the last Q. Furable, you saved my life. I used the trim() function and sure enough there must have been trailing whitespace lurking in there. It's passing the test now. Big thumbs up to this site! :D

[RamyaSivakanth]

trim() and check.

[murphaph]

Thanks Ramya, trim() worked a treat. :)

[Supamagier]

The next time, when printing such things, you should put ' before and after the string you print :) Than you'll notice things like this inmediatly

[murphaph]

Thanks supa, will do.