Nunit Assert

Assert.AreEqual vs Assert.AreSame

Very frequently I use Assert.AreEqual and Assert.AreSame for doing assertions in the code. Below is high level difference between both.

Assert.AreSame

Assert.AreSame checks whether both comparing objects are exactly the same ( reference indicate same object in memory) .It is normally known as Reference Equality

Assert.AreEqual

Assert.AreEqual checks whether both objects contain same value. It is normally known as Value Equality. For primitive value types ( like int, bool) this is straight forward. But for other types ( especially user defined objects) , it is depends on how the type defines equality.

Hence Assert.AreEqual will fail ( most of the time) when we compare two objects. This link have some discussion point about the same.