C# difference between == and Equals()

Question

I have a condition in a silverlight application that compares 2 strings, for some reason when I use == it returns false while .Equals()

Answer 1

==

The == operator can be used to compare two variables of any kind, and it simply compares the bits.

int a = 3;
byte b = 3;
if (a == b) { // true }

Note : there are more zeroes on the left side of the int but we don't care about that here.

int a (00000011) == byte b (00000011)

Remember == operator cares only about the pattern of the bits in the variable.

Use == If two references (primitives) refers to the same object on the heap.

Rules are same whether the variable is a reference or primitive.

Foo a = new Foo();
Foo b = new Foo();
Foo c = a;

if (a == b) { // false }
if (a == c) { // true }
if (b == c) { // false }

a == c is true a == b is false

the bit pattern are the same for a and c, so they are equal using ==.

Equal():

Use the equals() method to see if two different objects are equal.

Such as two different String objects that both represent the characters in "Jane"