ruby string equality

Ruby String Equality

To check for string equality in Ruby, you can use the == operator. This operator compares the contents of two strings and returns true if they are equal, and false otherwise. Here's an example:

str1 = "Hello"
str2 = "Hello"

if str1 == str2
  puts "The strings are equal"
else
  puts "The strings are not equal"
end

In this example, the == operator is used to compare str1 and str2. Since both strings have the same content ("Hello"), the condition str1 == str2 evaluates to true, and the message "The strings are equal" is printed.

It's important to note that the == operator checks for content equality, not object identity. This means that two different string objects with the same content will be considered equal. For example:

str1 = "Hello"
str2 = "Hello"

if str1 == str2
  puts "The strings are equal"
else
  puts "The strings are not equal"
end

In this case, even though str1 and str2 are different objects, they have the same content ("Hello"), so the condition str1 == str2 still evaluates to true.

If you want to check for object identity (i.e., if two variables refer to the same object), you can use the equal? method. For example:

str1 = "Hello"
str2 = "Hello"

if str1.equal?(str2)
  puts "The variables refer to the same object"
else
  puts "The variables refer to different objects"
end

In this example, since str1 and str2 are different objects, the condition str1.equal?(str2) evaluates to false, and the message "The variables refer to different objects" is printed.

That's how you can check for string equality in Ruby using the == operator and object identity using the equal? method.