Hi Jerome, I saw the implementation of equals for cookie and have to admit I was almost shocked :)
The code brings out to the fore the following phrases/sentences from the Object#equals and hashcode contracts Object#equals 1.1 equals method for class Object implements the most discriminating possible equivalence relation on objects 1.2 so as to maintain the general contract for the hashCode method, which states that equal objects must have equal hash codes. Object#hashCode 2.1 It is not required that if two objects are unequal according to the equals(java.lang.Object) method, then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects must produce distinct integer results the essence of my objection to the present implementation is that "equal objects must have equal hash codes" but not "objects having equal hashCodes must be equal" In cookies case an example might be contrivied where for one cookie the version is say 1, name evaluates to 2 and all others evaluate to 1 and for another cookie the version is 2, name evaluates to 1 as do the other params .. in this case equals as implemented by Cookie will lead to a faulty conclusion of "true". The equals has to be even more discriminating than hashCode. and the instanceOf doesn't make it discriminating enough. I hope I was succint enough. Cheers Piyush
