What issues should be considered when overriding equals and hashCode in Java?
When overriding the equals()
and hashCode()
methods in Java, you should consider the following issues:
Symmetry: The
equals()
method should be symmetric, which means thatx.equals(y)
should return the same result asy.equals(x)
.Transitivity: If
x.equals(y)
andy.equals(z)
aretrue
, thenx.equals(z)
should also betrue
.Consistency: The
equals()
method should be consistent, which means that multiple invocations ofx.equals(y)
should return the same result as long as the objects being compared are not modified.Null comparison: The
equals()
method should returnfalse
whenx
isnull
ory
isnull
.Reflexivity: The
equals()
method should be reflexive, which means thatx.equals(x)
should returntrue
.Hash code consistency: If
x.equals(y)
istrue
, thenx.hashCode()
should be equal toy.hashCode()
.Hash code stability: The
hashCode()
method should return the same value for an object as long as the object is not modified.Hash code uniqueness: It is not required, but it is recommended that different objects have different hash codes.
It is also important to override the equals()
and hashCode()
methods together, as the hashCode()
method is used in hash-based collections such as `