Java String equalsIgnoreCase()

Last updated: January 8, 2024

Reviewed by: Michal Aibin
Course – LS – All

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1. Overview

In this quick tutorial, we’ll look at determining if two String values are the same when we ignore case.

2. Using the equalsIgnoreCase()

equalsIgnoreCase() accepts another String and returns a boolean value:

String lower = "equals ignore case";
String UPPER = "EQUALS IGNORE CASE";

assertThat(lower.equalsIgnoreCase(UPPER)).isTrue();

3. Using Apache Commons Lang

The Apache Commons Lang library contains a class called StringUtils that provides a method similar to the method above, but it has the added benefit of handling null values:

String lower = "equals ignore case"; 
String UPPER = "EQUALS IGNORE CASE"; 

assertThat(StringUtils.equalsIgnoreCase(lower, UPPER)).isTrue();
assertThat(StringUtils.equalsIgnoreCase(lower, null)).isFalse();

4. Conclusion

In this article, we took a quick look at determining if two String values are the same when we ignore case. Now, things get a bit trickier when we internationalize, as case-sensitivity is specific to a language – stay tuned for more info.

And, as always, all code examples can be found over on GitHub.

Course – LS – All

Get started with Spring and Spring Boot, through the Learn Spring course:

>> CHECK OUT THE COURSE
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