== Looks only at Variables

For primitive types, also, the == operator looks only at the variables. For example:

int x = 32;
int y = 48;

if ( x == y ) System.out.println("They are equal.");

Only the contents of the variables x and y are examined. But with primitive types, the contents of a variable is the data, so with primitive types == looks at data.

With reference types, == looks at the contents of the variables, but now the variables contain object references.