Position literals first in String comparisons

[carlwilson]

There are 38 occurrences of this issue
Why is this an issue?
Since: PMD 3.3

Position literals first in comparisons, if the second argument is null then NullPointerExceptions can be avoided, they will just return false.

Example(s):

class Foo {
  boolean bar(String x) {
    return x.equals("2"); // should be "2".equals(x)
  }
}

Codacy's list of all occurrences of the issue can be found here

[carlwilson]

Hi @nvanderperren I've chosen this as your first issue. It's a pet hate of mine. There's 38 instances of the problem, I'd be happier if you fix them a file at a time and then submit a pull request per file if that's OK? Here's an example in the JHOVE window code:

if (_selectedModule.equals ("")) {
    return null;
}

It should read:

if ("".equals(_selectedModule)) {
    return null;
}

This avoids the code throwing a null pointer exception when _selectedModule is null as the comparison method accounts for this.

Good luck

[nvanderperren]

Thanks @carlwilson, will do!

[nvanderperren]

I think I've solved all 38 occurences

[carlwilson]

I concur, nice work.

[nvanderperren]

yay! 🎉

[carlwilson]

Fixed by #432, #433, #434, #435, #436, #437, #439, #440 and #441