Wierd IF statment problem

Question

Here's the source:
String testText = answer1[aC];
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,testText,"Test",JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE);
if(testText == "yes"){
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,"Success!","Test",JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE);
The Message Dialog shows "yes" (without the quotes) when it pops up, but the if statement is never true. answer1[] is a srting array which is built from a database. I have also tried:
String testText = String.valueOf(answer1[aC]);
String testText = answer1[aC].toString;
I also tried to modify the the first message dialog like this to eliminate the possibility of leading or trailing spaces:
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null,"." + testText + ".","Test",JOptionPane.PLAIN_MESSAGE);
Case matches perfect, infact, I can tell you that the word 'yes' has 56 pixels in it on my current font (that's how hard I have studied why yes != yes). Now, if I change the first line of code to say:
String testText = "yes";
That works fine. Any help??

Answer 1

Be careful when using the "==" operator to compare objects - especially strings - in Java. The "==" operator will return true if and ONLY if the two strings are the same reference (i.e. point to the same location in memory). So the following would not work:
String string1 = "Hello";
String string2 = "Hel" + "lo";
if (string1 == string2)
  System.out.println("This won't print!");There is a method in the String class (actually in the Object class, but it is overridden in String) called equals() that will return true if the two strings are equivalent (i.e. same contents, even if they are located in different areas of memory). So we could fix the above to look like this:
String string1 = "Hello";
String string2 = "Hel" + "lo";
if (string1.equals(string2))
  System.out.println("Now we see the print statement");