What's the quickest way to compare strings in Java?

Question

What's the quickest to compare two strings in Java?

Is there something faster than equals?

EDIT: I can not help much to clarify the problem.

I have two String which are sorted alphabetically and EXACTLY the same size

Example: abbcee and abcdee

Strings can be long up to 30 characters

Answer 1

I don't expect that Sun Oracle hasn't already optimized the standard String#equals() to the max. So, I expect it to be already the quickest way. Peek a bit round in its source if you want to learn how they implemented it. Here's an extract:

public boolean equals(Object anObject) {     if (this == anObject) {         return true;     }     if (anObject instanceof String) {         String anotherString = (String)anObject;         int n = count;         if (n == anotherString.count) {             char v1[] = value;             char v2[] = anotherString.value;             int i = offset;             int j = anotherString.offset;             while (n-- != 0) {                 if (v1[i++] != v2[j++])                     return false;             }             return true;         }     }     return false; }