Simplify if statement: if (legendTitle != null && legendTitle.equals("My house")) [duplicate]

Question

I try to commit my code but the code analysis in IntelliJ shows: 'if' statement can be simpolified in this line:

if (legendTitle != null && legendTitle.equals("My house"))

legendTitle is a String, I wrote legendTitle != null because .equals in a null Strings is a NullPointerException

you could easier do that as this: if ( "My house".equals(legendTitle)) — Stultuske
That said, I probably wouldn't bother - the line is fine as is. At least that way it clearly communicates that the null case has been considered. — Hulk
If the legendTitle is the result of some method call, you could consider changing the return type of that method call to Optional<String> and use the appropriate Optional methods, but if it is something local, that would probably be unnecessary overhead. — Hulk
Also related: softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/16908/… — Hulk
Do you even want to support the case that legendTitle is null? Because if you consider this a bug in your code you should actually trigger the exception on purpose, fail-fast. Otherwise you wont notice the bug. However, in that case prefer Objects.requireNonNull(legendTitle);, more expressive. — Zabuzard

amseager amseager · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-17T08:39:41

You can write if ("My house".equals(legendTitle)). "My house" can never be null so you won't get NullPointerException in this case.