How to override equals method in Java

Question

I am trying to override equals method in Java. I have a class People which basically has 2 data fields name and age. Now I want to ove

Answer 1

I'm not sure of the details as you haven't posted the whole code, but:

• remember to override hashCode() as well
• the equals method should have Object, not People as its argument type. At the moment you are overloading, not overriding, the equals method, which probably isn't what you want, especially given that you check its type later.
• you can use instanceof to check it is a People object e.g. if (!(other instanceof People)) { result = false;}
• equals is used for all objects, but not primitives. I think you mean age is an int (primitive), in which case just use ==. Note that an Integer (with a capital 'I') is an Object which should be compared with equals.

See What issues should be considered when overriding equals and hashCode in Java? for more details.