A nice feature of Eclipse is that you can easily generate hashCode and equals methods for your Java class using the editor. You'll really appreciate this capability when you need to create these methods whenever you're doing anything related to sorting, comparisons, comparators, etc.
To generate hashCode and equals methods, just have the desired Java class open in the Eclipse editor, then click the Source menu, then choose the "Generate hashCode() and equals()" menu item. Assuming you have class variables available, Eclipse will generate the methods for you. (Of course, like any generated code you'll want to review it, but I've been able to use the generated code in several tests so far.)
Follow up
I've included the source code for a Java class below, so you can see what the class looked like before creating these methods, and then see the hashCode and equals methods Eclipse generated.
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