Comparing two maps

Question

I have two maps declared as Map. The Object here could be another Map (and so on). I want

Answer 1

As long as you override equals() on each key and value contained in the map, then m1.equals(m2) should be reliable to check for maps equality.

The same result can be obtained also by comparing toString() of each map as you suggested, but using equals() is a more intuitive approach.

May not be your specific situation, but if you store arrays in the map, may be a little tricky, because they must be compared value by value, or using Arrays.equals(). More details about this see here.