5.1.4.2. Comparison Methods

Returns .true or .false, the result of performing a specified comparison operation.

For the Object class, if argument is the same object as the receiver object, the result is .true, otherwise .false is returned. Subclasses may override this method to define equality using different criteria. For example, the String class determines equality based on the value of the string data.

Note

The MapCollection classes such as Table and Relation use the == operator combined with the hashCode method to determine index and item equivalence. It is generally necessary for a class to override both the hashCode method and the == operator method to maintain the contract specified for the hashCode method.

The comparison operators you can use in a message are:

=, ==: .true if the terms are the same object.
\=, ><, <>, \==: .true if the terms are not the same object (inverse of =).