FULL PRODUCT VERSION :
Java SE 1.6.0_07

ADDITIONAL OS VERSION INFORMATION :
Windows XP SP3

A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROBLEM :
Collator.equals method gives incorrect results for comparisons in Finnish and Swedish locales. The method equates e.g. the Finnish word "pässi" (goat) with the word "passi" passport. There's no relation with the sounds that the characters "ä" and "a" represent in the language so it's illegal to equate the characters. Equating them will always result in change or loss of meaning.

The scandinavian characters are different from the accented characters used e.g. in some latin based languages such as french in that these characters (ä, ö, å) represent entirely independent sounds in the language and therefore cannot be represented with any other sound without change of meaning. It is therefore illegal to replace these characters with any other character.

This means for example that you can't change the finnish word sää (weather) to saa (will have) because these are two entirely different words with different meaning. The same applies to scandinavian languages as well.

There's no connection between the sounds represented by ä and a; ö and o or å and a.

STEPS TO FOLLOW TO REPRODUCE THE PROBLEM :
see source code below

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
eq: false
eq: false

ACTUAL -
eq: true
eq: true


REPRODUCIBILITY :
This bug can be reproduced always.

---------- BEGIN SOURCE ----------
Locale finnish = new Locale("fi_FI");
java.text.Collator fi = java.text.Collator.getInstance(finnish);
fi.setStrength(java.text.Collator.PRIMARY);
System.out.println("eq: "+fi.equals("pässi", "passi"));

Locale swedish = new Locale("se_SE");
java.text.Collator se = java.text.Collator.getInstance(swedish);
se.setStrength(java.text.Collator.PRIMARY);
System.out.println("eq: "+se.equals("kön", "kon"));


---------- END SOURCE ----------