What is the difference in string.Equals("string") and "String".Equals(string)?

Question

Is there any difference in following two lines of code that compares the string values.

string str = "abc";

if(str.Equals("abc"))

and

if("abc".Equals(str))

in the first line I am calling the equals method on string variable to compare it with string literal. The second line is vice versa. Is it just the difference of coding style or there is a difference in the way these two statements are processed by the compiler.

Answer 1

The only difference is that, in the first case, when you do:

str.Equals("abc")

If str is null, you'll get an exception at runtime. By doing:

"abc".Equals(str)

If str is null, you'll get false.

Answer 2

The difference is that in the second example, you will never get a NullReferenceException because a literal can't be null.