2 identical Strings won't match?

Question

hi, i have a program that takes some bytes out of a data file. It then checks to see if the data matches the
requested IDs. I have a strange problem. I have 2 different IDs that i have requested. When I request the first,
it works fine and the program selects properly. If I select the second, it also works fine and selects correctly.
However, if I select the first, get the correct results, and then try to select the second ID without restarting the
program first it will NOT select. I stepped through, and basically there is a comparison between 2 String that
is returning erronous conclusions. It works the first time around no problem, but for some reason when i am
in there the second time it won't match right. I tried using the '==' operator, the compareTo, and the
equalsIgnoreCase methods, all with the same result. Also, i get this same error no matter which order i put
the IDs in. I.e- i select 1st ID, get correct results, then try to select 2nd ID and get wrong results. It works the
same if I switch the ID selection order. Also, these IDs are number strings. Does anyone know why this is
happening? What am I missing here? thanks!

Answer 1

ooops! sorry, here is some code:
                                                      String claimID = new String();
                                                      String requestedID= new String("XXXXX"); //this is just so it won't match claimID
                                                      claimID = claim.substring(IDStart-1,IDEnd-1);
                                                       for(int p=0;p<requestNum;p++){//do this loop for each ID requested...
                                        requestedID = requests.getRequestedID(p);
                                        compare = claimID.compareTo(requestedID);
                                        //if(compare==0){
                                        if(requestedID.equalsIgnoreCase(claimID)){
                                             currentIDsMatch++; //if the IDs match, then increment this variable
                                             break;                                        
                                        }//end if
                                   }//end for
Notes: i just added the new String declaration because i thought the static nature of a declaration might
change the results. THe strange part is that i exit this function completely and come back to it between the
2 selections. Although this is inside a listener of a Swing Object that never dies in between so i guess it
never officially goes away..... does this help?