Pattern: Explicit call to equals()
Issue: -
This rule detects when the equals(Object) method is called directly in code instead of using the == or != operator. A groovier way to express this: a.equals(b) is this: a == b and a groovier way to express : !a.equals(b) is: a != b. This rule can be configured to ignore this.equals(Object) using the ignoreThisReference property. It defaults to false, so even equals(x) will trigger a violation.
This rule also ignores all calls to super.equals(Object).