UPDATE: Thank you all for your answers, especially pertaining to .equals().
The only detail is that the "msgCode = ..." and "msgValue = ..." statements are enough to return an empty stirngBuilder. I.e., I don't even have to declare the IF statement to make it stop working.
Any clues?
ORIGINAL:
Please let me know why StringBuilder returns nothing (perhaps doesn't even work) when I include the rest of the code (besides stringBuilder.append(...)) inside the while().
When I include just stringBuilder.append(...), then there is a return value.
while ( (receiveString = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null ) {
    stringBuilder.append(receiveString + "\n");
    // analyze the first 3 characters in the message
    String msgCode = receiveString.substring(0, 3);
    Number msgValue =  Integer.parseInt(receiveString.substring(4, receiveString.length()-4));
    // use IF-ELSE since SWITCH doesn't work with String
    if (msgCode=="ATT") {
        dataATT[2*dataATTcount+1] = msgValue; 
        dataATTcount++;
    } else {
        dataMED[2*dataMEDcount+1] = msgValue; 
        dataMEDcount++;                     
    }
}
Thanks
 
     
    