two strings are equal in case of equals method if both strings that you are comparing have the same characters and have the same case such as "hello".equals("hello") will return true as both the strings have the same characters h,e,l,l,o and they do have the same length and also have the same case.
Now change the case of h to H i.e write "Hello".equals("hello") this will return false which shows that the strings are not equal.
understood.

String.equal() return type is boolean
example:

String a = "not Hello"
if(a.equal("Hello")){
will do whatever here if result is true}

or

if(!a.equal("Hello")){
will do whatever here if result is true}

and so on..

Use ( ! "hello".equals(someString) ) edit: Yes, same thing striker just posted

Thank you VERY MUCH. I didn't find anything on a not equals method for comparing strings. Placing the not operator before the equals test never occured to me. Oh well, such are the pains of beginning programing classes. Thanks again!

Haha good to see an old post is still helping people

can i use like these ?
String a = "Hello";
if ( a == "Hello" )

am php programmer .. never try java.

thx .

Why don't you just try it? Just by reading the thread (I started it a while back now so can't remember) I would say you need the .equals() method to return for you...

thank you for reply
i don't have java install ^^" today i learning java and downloading jdk

Yes, I bet the frendly people who help here would wish more people would search for answers before posting duplicate questions.

On a side note, I'm going to have to ask for help in a second, since I have a switch statement that just isn't working correctly.