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Further confusion arises because the numerical comparison operators <, <=, >, and >= can be used with the numeric boxed types Byte, Character, Short, Integer, Long, Float, and Double. In this case, auto-unboxing results in the numeric values contained in the boxed objects being compared, with the expected results (see JLS Section 5.6.2, "Binary Numeric Promotion"). When both arguments of a == or != operator are numeric boxed type, the equality operators are defined to be reference equality operators; the operation is thus a reference comparison rather than the anticipated numeric comparison, which may produce unexpected results (see EXP03-J. Avoid the equal and not equal operators when comparing values of boxed primitives).
Noncompliant Code Example
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