"low level" has nothing to do w/ it. Doing things like strcmp (strncmp) isn't as efficient as java strings, since hash's comparisons MAY be faster.

Try doing a strncmp of say, two identical 10k byte strings, but when you do a.equals(b), where a,b are strings, then doing equals() should be faster, since the hash values are calculated and compared, using specific algorithms that are prolly faster in the long term.

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Play that funky music white boy..