Can you compare chars with ==? [duplicate]

Question

For Strings you have to use equals to compare them, because == only compares the references.

Does it give the expected result if I compare chars with == ?

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I have seen similar questions on stackoverflow, E.g.

• What is the difference between == vs equals() in Java?

However, I haven't seen one that asks about using == on chars.

Answer 1

Yes, but also no.

Technically, == compares two ints. So in code like the following:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    char a = 'c';
    char b = 'd';
    if (a == b) {
        System.out.println("wtf?");
    }
}

Java is implicitly converting the line a == b into (int) a == (int) b.

The comparison will still "work", however.

Answer 2

Yes, char is just like any other primitive type, you can just compare them by ==.

You can even compare char directly to numbers and use them in calculations eg:

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println((int) 'a'); // cast char to int
        System.out.println('a' == 97); // char is automatically promoted to int
        System.out.println('a' + 1); // char is automatically promoted to int
        System.out.println((char) 98); // cast int to char
    }
}

will print:

97
true
98
b