is split() method's Arrray assignment different?

hi guys im working on a project for creating my own custom datepicker in java. but I got stuck here in a place when using the split method.when i split a string into array of strings, and run a loop through the array to find a specific value and if that specific value is found within the array, then to print that "the value blalala is found,but it doesn’t work the way i expect it to.even if "dd" is available it doesn’t print "dd is here".ill provide the code below here

public static void main(String[] args) {
        String date="dd/mm/yyyy";
        String[] datesplit=date.split("/", 5);
        
        for(int c=0;c<=2;c++)
        {
            if(datesplit[c]=="dd")
            {
                System.out.println("dd is here");
            }
        }
    }

but if i loop through the array and print every value, it outputs every value

public static void main(String[] args) {
        String date="dd/mm/yyyy";
        String[] datesplit=date.split("/", 5);
        for(int c=0;c<=2;c++)
        {
            System.out.println(datesplit[c]);
        }

but I’ve tried it without the split method by creating an array manually and then looping through it to find the value i want and print "the value is found". surprisingly it works.

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        
        String[] date={"dd","mm","yyyy"};
        for(int c=0;c<=2;c++)
        {
            if(date[c]=="dd")
            {
                System.out.println("dd is here");
            }
        }

I’m baffled why the array is buggy when using the split method().any ideas

>Solution :

You’re confronting two references with the == operator.

if(datesplit[c]=="dd")

You cannot do that. References must be confronted with the equals method. The == operator checks the content of two variables. A reference contains the memory address of the object it points to, therefore when you’re performing if(datesplit[c]=="dd"), you’re checking if the address contained within datesplit[c] is equal to the address of the reference containing "dd", which are of course different since they point to two different objects in memory. The == can be used only for primitive types as they contain the actual value they represent.

What you need to do is write your comparison with the equals method like so:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String date = "dd/mm/yyyy";
    String[] datesplit = date.split("/", 5);

    for (int c = 0; c <= 2; c++) {
        if (datesplit[c].equals("dd")) {
            System.out.println("dd is here");
        }
    }
}