The contract for equals(object)
method specifies 4 properties to follow: Reflexive, Symmetric, Transitive and Consistent. While I understand the danger of not following Reflexive, Symmetric and Consistent , and can definitely agree its good to follow transitive, I was wondering what harm it would bring if its violating the Transitive property?
Specifically, which of the Java library (or various third party libraries) need the dependency upon equals
to be transitive to work correctly? In my understanding, the Collections framework will work if the other 3 properties are well implemented.