Autoboxing & Equality

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I was curious as to the effects of autoboxing on equality, so I wrote this short class:

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public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int int1 = 5;
        int int2 = 5;
        Integer autobox1 = 5;
        Integer autobox2 = 5;
        Integer autobox3 = int1;
        Integer integer1 = new Integer(5);
        Integer integer2 = new Integer(5);

        System.out.println("int1 == int2 -> " + (int1 == int2));
        System.out.println("int1 == autobox1 -> " + (int1 == autobox1));
        System.out.println("autobox1 == autobox2 -> " + (autobox1 == autobox2));
        System.out.println("int1 == autobox3 -> " + (int1 == autobox3));
        System.out.println("int1 == integer1 -> " + (int1 == integer1));
        System.out.println("integer1 == autobox1 -> " + (integer1 == autobox1));
        System.out.println("integer1 == integer2 -> " + (integer1 == integer2));
    }
}

The output is as follows:

int1 == int2 -> true
int1 == autobox1 -> true
autobox1 == autobox2 -> true
int1 == autobox3 -> true
int1 == integer1 -> true
integer1 == autobox1 -> false
integer1 == integer2 -> false

As expected, the two ints are equal and the two Integers are not. I didn’t know what to expect for the rest.

The moral of the story is to (almost) always use .equals() when available, since it will have consistent results.

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