How would you implement equals ()

Question

For complex classes with many data members, my dilema is:
1. equals should return true only if all fields of the two objects are
equals.
2. equals should return true if the key(s) of the two objets are equal.
For instance, we have the Class Person, that contains dozens of
data: ID, name, age, job, salary, children, more 1000 items.
Person is like a record in a DB table. There can not be two persons
with the same ID.
In this case, how would you implement equals, and why?
thanks

Answer 1

What I'm trying to say is: what is equality foryou?
Two objects are equal if all there contents areequals
or is it enough
to compare their keys?
In the latter case, there can happen, by somereason,
that we can end
up with two objects with the same keys, but all the
rest of
the contents different.i think you meant to say that:
In the latter case, there can happen, by somereason,
that we can end
up with two objects with different keys, but
all the rest of the contents the same.and the answer is, and listen carefully, it totally
depends on the application you are writing. there
is no hard definition of equality where custom classes
are concerned... that is the answer.If this question arises, you should revisit your design.
If two entities have equal keys, they should be considered to be equal. Otherwise the attributes you call keys are in the fact normal attributes and no keys.