String equality in Java

Question

I have seen both of these when checking the equality of two Java String's:

// Method A
String string1;
// ...
if("MyString".equals(string1)) {
    // ...
}

and

// Method B
String string1;
// ...
if(string1.equals("MyString")) {
    // ...
}

My question is: which one is better and more widely used?

Answer 1

If you are sure that string1 can never be null then option 2 is readable and preferred. Otherwise option 1. Intention of option 1 is to avoid potential null pointer.