Eclipse compiler setting to catch == on String

Question

Is there a way to configure eclipse to tag an == comparison on String objects as Errors? I just want a way to prevent developers from using == to compare strings accidentally or unknowingly. I searched through eclipse and could not find anything. Any ideas.

Answer 1

There is nothing built into Eclipse that you can enable to do this check, afaik. But, you can incorporate a third party static analysis tool to do it for you. FindBugs does have a rule to check for exactly what you've described, and can be incorporated into Eclipse via plugin.

• FindBugs
• FindBugs String Equality Rule
• FindBugs Eclipse Plugin Guide

Other static analysis tools you might want to take a look at include Checkstyle and PMD.

Answer 2

Use PMD or Findbugs plugins for eclipse to do this. These tools will also let you catch other common programming mistakes.

Direct link to findbug rule to detect this situation: http://findbugs.sourceforge.net/bugDescriptions.html#ES_COMPARING_STRINGS_WITH_EQ