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Full code (did not compile)

Full code (untested)

This question over at Stack Overflow will give you some insight into iteration over a string including speeds.

This one explains what's behind carriage return and why we have \n\r and just \n.

This question over at Stack Overflow will give you some insight into iteration over a string including speeds.

This one explains what's behind carriage return and why we have \n\r and just \n.

Alternative to your code (another method, did not compile)

A simpler and faster alternative (besides what was mentioned before) is to perform a comparison through the whole of both strings but just ignoring any carriage return by skipping them, a carriage return by itself never represents a new line.

Explanations in comments:

public static StringUtils {
 static final char CR = '\r';
 /**
 * Compares two strings ignoring any carriage return characters.
 */
 public static boolean equalsIgnoringNewlineStyle(String a, String b) {
 if (a == b) { // if both null return true
 return true;
 }
 if (a == null || b == null) { // darn nulls
 return false;
 }
 // each string's indices
 int index_a = 0;
 int index_b = 0;
 // stop looping if we reach the end of either of the strings
 while (index_a < a.length() && index_b < b.length()) {
 // get each character
 char first = a.charAt(index_a);
 char second = b.charAt(index_b);
 // if the same just continue
 if (first == second) {
 continue;
 }
 // if not a character we want to ignore, then the strings are not equal
 if (first != CR && second != CR) {
 return false;
 }
 // keep 'a_index' if 'second' is 'CR', otherwise go to next char
 a_index = (second == CR ? a_index : a_index + 1);
 // keep 'b_index' if 'first' is 'CR', otherwise go to next char
 b_index = (first == CR ? b_index : b_index + 1);
 }
 // strings are equal if we went all the way through to the end of them
 return index_a == a.length() && index_b == b.length();
 }
}