java class differences

I've been given the task of trying to determine if some Java source code is the correct version of what is in production.
Previous people took the source code and compiled it and then compared it to the class they extracted from the production ear file.
There were slight differences but they said they were 99% the same. I'm not sure how they reached that conclusion.

My question is, is it possible that the production classes were compiled from this source? Are there any logical explanations for these minor discrepancies, such as different versions of compilers or different versions of j2ee.jar and struts.jar files?

Does anyone have a suggestion as to a better way to determine if the code is the correct version, such as decompiling it?

Thanks,
Tim
.

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