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This tutorial shows you how to check if two characters are equal in Java.

In Java, we can use the equals( ==) operator or the Charactercompare() equals()method of the Character class to compare two characters. If you are working with primitive character values, you can simply use ==the equality operator, but with character class instances, use the compare( equals()) method.

In this article, we will learn the use of these two comparison equality methods through examples. Let’s get started.

Checking for Equality of Characters in Java Using ==Equality Operator

Java uses ==the equality operator to check whether two values ​​are equal or not. We can use this operator to check whether two characters are equal or not.

In this example, we created three characters and compared them using the == equality operator. This operator returns true if two characters are equal, otherwise it returns false.

public class SimpleTesting {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    char ch1 = 'J';
    char ch2 = 'K';
    char ch3 = 'J';
    System.out.println(ch1 == ch2);
    System.out.println(ch2 == ch3);
    System.out.println(ch1 == ch3);
  }
}

Output:

false
false
true

equals()Check for equal characters using the method in Java

If you are using Characterthe class and want to compare two character values, then use the compare method belonging to Objectthe class equals(), which returns true if the objects are equal, otherwise it returns false. See the example below.

public class SimpleTesting {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Character ch1 = 'J';
    Character ch2 = 'K';
    Character ch3 = 'J';
    System.out.println(ch1.equals(ch2));
    System.out.println(ch2.equals(ch3));
    System.out.println(ch1.equals(ch3));
  }
}

Output:

false
false
true

compare()Check for equal characters using the method in Java

Here is another solution that can be used to check if two characters are equal. compare()The method belongs to Stringthe class and returns 0 if the two values ​​are equal.

Here, we use this method and ==the equality operator to verify if it returns 0. If it returns 0, then both values ​​are equal. See the example below.

public class SimpleTesting {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Character ch1 = 'J';
    Character ch2 = 'K';
    Character ch3 = 'J';
    System.out.println(Character.compare(ch1, ch2) == 0);
    System.out.println(Character.compare(ch2, ch3) == 0);
    System.out.println(Character.compare(ch1, ch3) == 0);
  }
}

Output:

false
false
true

When checking equality of two objects, always check the value. Java does not consider lowercase and uppercase equal. We consider the two values ​​to be the same, but Java works on Unicode values ​​and the two variables hold different Unicode. That is why Java returns false to the console. See the code example and understand how Java treats lowercase and uppercase characters differently.

public class SimpleTesting {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Character ch1 = 'J';
    Character ch2 = 'j';
    System.out.println(ch1 == ch2);
  }
}

Output:

false