Why define object for getEntry in HashMap

Question

I am new to generics and I am not sure if the answer to my question is opinion based or has a genuine reason. In the following code what was need to case a key

Answer 1

You've missed the last part of where key is checked for equality with k, so removing assignment (k = e.key) will break the last check -

if (e.hash == hash && ((k = e.key) == key || (key != null && key.equals(k))))