Best way to tell if 2 strings are equal

Hi all so I'm trying to see if 2 strings are equal to each other. For example if CEIT2551202X038 is equal to CEIT2551202X038. I have tried -eq , .equals , and .compareTo with no luck. Also I cannot use match because they are computer names and many of them would match. It seems that -eq and .equals sometimes work but other times they don't. I just need to know what's the best way to find out if they are equal.

Thanks.