The equals method:

public boolean equals(Object obj)

The equals method for class Object implements the most discriminating possible equivalence relation on objects; that is, for any non-null reference values x and y, this method returns true if and only if x and y refer to the same object (x == y has the value true).

Note that it is generally necessary to override the hashCode method whenever this method is overridden, so as to maintain the general contract for the hashCode method, which states that equal objects must have equal hash codes.

The hashCode method:

public int hashCode()

As much as is reasonably practical, the hashCode method defined by class Object does return distinct integers for distinct objects. (This is typically implemented by converting the internal address of the object into an integer, but this implementation technique is not required by the Java™ programming language.)

The toString() method of Object will use this code to generate the string representation of an object:

getClass().getName() + '@' + Integer.toHexString(hashCode())