String comparission in Java

Question

Can someone help me with the String comparission in Java? I mean I have two strings stored in suppose str1 and str2 and I am comparing them, it should show equal but is showing not equal. Can someone explain me what is the problem?

class Stringcmp
{6
    public static void main(String args[])
    {
        String s1 = new String("abcd");
        String s2 = new String("abcd");
        if (s1 == s2) 
            System.out.println("Equal");
        else
            System.out.println("Not equal");
    }
}

Answer 1

Obviously it will print not equal. Since, s1 and s2 are two different objects the references are not the same, and the == operator compares object reference. So it prints “Not equal”, to compare the actual characters in the string .equals() method must be used.

Answer 2

You should use s1.equals(s2) instead of '==' for string comparison.

Comments

Aren't those one and the same?