alt Hacker News> But careful: == looks at internal state, which isn’t always what the object represents, so for “is this the same data” comparisons keep using equals.
So == for value classes will basically be like memcmp(). That is a bit unfortunate, as it breaks encapsulation, exposing implementation details. Client code can use this to do case distinctions based on how a given value is internally represented. In a way, it’s worse than identity comparison, because identity comparison at least doesn’t expose internal state.
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If your bags of data have internal state, there's something wrong with your bags of data. I assume that the Java guys thought far enough to either exclude padding from comparisons or force padding bytes to be zero.
It should work even for strings: They will surely continue to be heap-allocated, and memcmp-ing pointers (inside the new "structs") is exactly an identity comparison.
the whole point of value class is that they should not encapsulate state, i.e. its a totally transparent data holder
I wanted to comment on this as well. The article mentions it but if you've never used Java in anger (is there any other way?) then readers may not understand the true implications of this because it's a breaking change, something Java rarely does. I'll explain for the non-Java people.
Java separates checking identity and equality for objects. == basically checks if two pointers are the same. Equality is a subjective concept based on an interface (ie equals/hashCode). So this means:
new Integer(1000) == new Integer(1000) // true, used to be false
new Integer(1000).equals(new Integer(1000)) // true
new Integer(10) == new Long(10) // compiler error, used to false
new Integer(10) == new Integer(10) // true
You may still be able to get the old behavior through variables too.
Anyway, if value classes lose identity then == changes from pointer equality to bitwise equality. That will hopefully resolve a bunch of corner cases like this but it is a breaking change, technically.
Value types are a concept very far away from the "magic black box organism" school of OOP thinking. It's not a novel way of doing classic OOP (does anyone still do that?), it's a way for a language born in OOP ideology get one step further into the post-OOP world.