Where do the methods equals and hashCode come from?

The equals and hashCode methods are part of the Object class in Java. Since all classes in Java implicitly or explicitly inherit from Object, they automatically receive the equals and hashCode methods. Initially:

• equals() compares object references (essentially, this == obj).
• hashCode() returns a value based on the address (usually native).

To correctly compare objects based on their content, these methods should be overridden in user-defined classes.