Can't figure out why this won't work

Question

Hi,
I'm working on a simple app that just checks to see if a word is a palindrome. So far it works up to the point where it reverses the word, but when I run my if -else statements to check if it is a palindrome or not, it will always say it isn't even if the word actually is a palindrome.
import java.io.*;
public class Main {
    public Main () {
    public static void main(String[] args){
    System.out.println("This program will see if a word is a palindrome.");
    System.out.println("Please enter a word: ");
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(System.in));
    String word = null;
    String wordcopy;
    try {
        word = br.readLine();
    } catch (IOException err) {
        System.out.println("IO error while trying to read the word.");
        System.exit(1);
     wordcopy = PalindromeCheck(word);
     if (wordcopy == word){
        System.out.println("The word is a palindrome.");
     else if (wordcopy != word){
        System.out.println("The word is NOT a palindrome.");
               /* This is always 
               * the output to the user whether it is a palindrome or not
    public static String PalindromeCheck(String word) {
        char[] word1 = word.toCharArray();
        char[] word2 = new char[word1.length];
        int wordlength = (word1.length - 1);
        for (int i = wordlength, j = 0; i >= 0; i--, j++) {
            word2[j]=word1;
System.out.println(word2); /*Checks to make sure it reversed the word*/
return new String(word2);
Any ideas on why it does this would be great.
Thanks a bunch

Answer 1

if (wordcopy == word){Don't use the == operator to compare the contents of two strings, it doesn't do that. Use the equals method instead:if (wordcopy.equals(word)){And by the way, if you start withif (conditionX)then you don't need to follow on withelse (not conditionX)That second test is redundant. A plain old "else" would do there.