Calling equals on string literal

Question

I just was tidying my code a bit and there was this piece:

String saving = getValue();
if(saving != null && saving.equals(\"true\")){
   // do someth         


        

Answer 1

This is safe - and as you have seen, a good way of avoiding null pointers.

You mention the use of new for Strings. Many java static code analysis tools will recommend always using literals over new String("foo");.

Edit:

If you wanted, you could even just use:

if (Boolean.valueOf(saving)) {
    ...
}

According to the docs, passing null will return false.