Java substring issue

Question

EDIT: Thank you, PakkuDon

instead of using "==" I must use ".Equals()"!

I'm trying to implement a chat-command system though I've encountered troubles in differentiating between standard chat and command chat..

Focusing on just one command for now, `highlight

the output whenever I type in `highlight is:

 highlight
`highlight

Here's my code:

    String cmd =  InMessage.message.substring(0, 10);
    System.out.println(cmd);
    System.out.println("`highlight");
    if( cmd == "`highlight" )
    {
       ... cancel chat packet and proces command
    }

and yet the if statement returns false.

What's going on here? Anything I've done is wrong?

Read [How do I compare strings in Java?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/513832/how-do-i-compare-strings-in-java) — PakkuDon, Mar 09 '14 at 10:27
And, your sample output is mixing upper and lower case, so `equals` will also return false. — keyser, Mar 09 '14 at 10:30
In case you are using Java 7 or above, you can use Strings in switch statements too. — Gábor Bakos, Mar 09 '14 at 10:30

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 09 '14 at 10:43

You have a number of problems. Firstly, that substring is going to throw an exception if the user types something that's less than 10 characters. Secondly, you're using == where equals would work better. But you don't need either of these things. You could just use

if (InMessage.message.startsWith("`highlight")) {
    // whatever
}

Java substring issue

1 Answers1