In Scala you can use ==
for equality
scala> "scala c++" == "scala java"
res0: Boolean = false
scala> "scala c++" == "scala java c++"
res1: Boolean = false
scala> "scala c++" == "scala c++"
res2: Boolean = true
The == method is defined in the AnyRef class. Since the methods first checks for null values, and then calls the equals method on the first object to see if the two objects are equals you dont have to do a special null check;
"test" == null
res0: Boolean = false
See the Scala getting started guide and strings
From "An Overview of the Scala Programming Language
Second Edition";
"The equality operation == between values is designed to be
transparent with respect to the type's representation. For value
types, it is the natural (numeric or boolean) equality. For reference
types, == is treated as an alias of the equals method from
java.lang.Object. That method is originally defined as reference
equality, but is meant to be overridden in subclasses to implement the
natural notion of equality for these subclasses. For instance, the
boxed versions of value types would implement an equals method which
compares the boxed values. By contrast, in Java, == always means
reference equality on reference types. While this is a bit more
efficient to implement, it also introduces a serious coherence problem
because boxed versions of equal values might no longer be equal with
respect to ==. Some situations require reference equality instead of
user-dened equality. An example is hash-consing, where eciency is
paramount. For these cases, class AnyRef defines an additional eq
method, which cannot be overridden, and is implemented as reference
equality (i.e., it behaves like
== in Java for reference types)."