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Java Java Basics Perfecting the Prototype String Equality

Allen Emejuobi
Allen Emejuobi
5,009 Points
Posted by Allen Emejuobi
Allen Emejuobi
5,009 Points

How do I get past the equalsIgnoreCase method challenge in Java Basics? I keep getting a syntax error.

I thought I had it right with the code I put in, but apparently not, and I can't seem to figure out why.

Equality.java 
// I have imported a java.io.Console for you, it is named console. 
String firstExample = "hello";
String secondExample = "hello";
String thirdExample = "HELLO";
if(firstExample == secondExample){
  console.printf("first is equal to second.");
}

if(firstExample.equalsIgnoreCase("hello") == thirdExample){
  console.printf("first and third are the same ignoring case.");
}

1 Answer

andren
andren
28,558 Points
andren
andren
28,558 Points

The thing you pass as an argument to equalsIgnoreCase should be the thing you want to compare against. And you don't need to compare the result of this method to something else like you are doing. It will return true or false on it's own. So it's meant to look like this:

if(firstExample.equalsIgnoreCase(thirdExample)){
  console.printf("first and third are the same ignoring case.");
}

Also for various reasons a bit to complex to get into at this stage of your learning it's considered bad practice to compare strings using ==. For string comparisons you should always use the equals or equalsIgnoreCase method. So the code for the first task should ideally look like this:

if(firstExample.equals(secondExample)){
  console.printf("first is equal to second");
}
Allen Emejuobi
Allen Emejuobi
5,009 Points
Allen Emejuobi
Allen Emejuobi
5,009 Points

I appreciate it so much! Thank you!!!