What is the difference between the equals method and the == operator in Java?

In Java, the == operator and the equals() method are used for comparison but work differently:

• == compares references to objects, meaning it checks whether two variables point to the same object in memory.
• equals() compares the content of objects, i.e., the equality logic defined in the class. By default (in the Object class), equals() behaves like ==, but many classes (e.g., String, Integer) override this method to compare values.

Example:

String a = new String("test");
String b = new String("test");

System.out.println(a == b);       // false, different objects
System.out.println(a.equals(b));  // true, same content

Therefore, for comparing object values, always use equals(), and == for checking object identity.