Java question about autoboxing and object equality / identity [duplicate]

Answer 1

If autounboxing had worked also when doing equality checking with the '==' operator you could write:

    Long notNullSafeLong1 = new Long(11L)
    Long notNullSafeLong2 = new Long(22L)
    if ( notNullSafeLong1 == notNullSafeLong2) {
      do suff

This would require implementing an override for == so that null==someLong is false and the special case Null==Null is true. Instead we have to use equal() and test for null

    Long notNullSafeLong1 = new Long(11L)
    Long notNullSafeLong2 = new Long(22L)
    if ( (notNullSafeLong1 == null && notNullSafeLong2 == null) || 
      (notNullSafeLong1 != null && notNullSafeLong2 != null & 
        notNullSafeLong1.equals(notNullSafeLong2)) {
      do suff    

This is alittle more verbose than the first example - if autounboxing had worked for the '==' operator.