String literal may be 'equals()' qualifier

Reports String.equals() or String.equalsIgnoreCase() calls with a string literal argument.

Some coding standards specify that string literals should be the qualifier of equals(), rather than argument, thus minimizing NullPointerException-s.

A quick-fix is available to exchange the literal and the expression.

Example:

  boolean isFoo(String value) {
    return value.equals("foo");
  }

After the quick-fix is applied:

  boolean isFoo(String value) {
    return "foo".equals(value);
  }

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

LiteralAsArgToStringEquals

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Code style issues

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection LiteralAsArgToStringEquals

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.2, Qodana for JVM 2025.2,

Last modified: 18 September 2025