## Lecture 1 (11:00)

- We do not use == to validate string equality.
- Instead, since string variables point to an object with a value of a series of letters, we can use the String method equals().

```java
private String name1, name2;
name1 = "Peter";
name2 = new String "Peter";

public boolean isEqual( name1, name2 )
{
	if ( name1.equals(name2) ) {
		return true
	}
	else {
		return false
	}
}
```