Question: equals() for objects, not necessarily strings

Question

My book goes over the equals(String str) method, but it does not cover other objects. For example, in the code below the equals method returns false by printing, "The objects are not equal" even though both objects contain the same numbers. I looked at the API, but it was confusing. I'm not that far along yet. Any answers to why the equals() returns a false below?
public class Exp
     public static void main(String[] args)
          Exp2 e = new Exp2(6, 8);
          Exp2 e1 = new Exp2(6, 8);
          if(e.equals(e1))
               System.out.println("Objects are equal.");
          else
               System.out.println("Objects are not equal.");
               System.out.println("");
}

Answer 1

paulcw wrote:
If you're the author of the Exp2 class, and you think that two objects of Exp2 that have been initialized with equal values should be equal (seems reasonable), then you'd define an equals method in Exp2 to express that.Exactly, just like the String class has code to explicitly compare the two String objects' characters.
The default equals() doesn't automagically compare objects' contents. I just uses == to see if the two references are pointing to the same object. If you want other behavior, you have to provide it, like String does.