Java contains doesn't work as expected because “someString” != “someString”

Question

I want check whether a String value val is contained within a List of Strings lets call it stringList.

I am doing this

if(stringList.con         


        

Answer 1

That doesn’t sound right: contains uses equals rather than ==, so if the string is in the list, it should be found. This can be verified in the indexOf method of the superclass AbstractList used by ArrayList.

Following your edit, make sure you trim strings before doing contains, as otherwise they may contain the newline character(s).