How default .equals and .hashCode will work for my classes?

java object equals hashcode equality
alexeypro picture alexeypro · Nov 14, 2010 · Viewed 66.6k times · Source

Say I have my own class

public class MyObj { /* ... */ }

It has some attributes and methods. It DOES NOT implement equals, DOES NOT implement hashCode.

Once we call equals and hashCode, what are the default implementations? From Object class? And what are they? How the default equals will work? How the default hashCode will work and what will return? == will just check if they reference to the same object, so it's easy, but what about equals() and hashCode() methods?

Answer

Etienne de Martel picture Etienne de Martel · Nov 14, 2010

Yes, the default implementation is Object's (generally speaking; if you inherit from a class that redefined equals and/or hashCode, then you'll use that implementation instead).

From the documentation:

equals

The equals method for class Object implements the most discriminating possible equivalence relation on objects; that is, for any non-null reference values x and y, this method returns true if and only if x and y refer to the same object (x == y has the value true).

hashCode

As much as is reasonably practical, the hashCode method defined by class Object does return distinct integers for distinct objects. (This is typically implemented by converting the internal address of the object into an integer, but this implementation technique is not required by the JavaTM programming language.)

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