How do == and equals differ when comparing Java strings?

For objects, == compares reference identity, while equals can compare logical content according to the class implementation. String overrides equals to compare character sequences. Inte ing may make some equal string literals share a reference, but relying on that for content comparison is incorrect. Objects.equals handles a possibly null pair safely. For primitives, == compares values rather than object identity. When creating a custom value type, define equals and hashCode consistently so logically equal objects work correctly in hash-based collections.