Re: PHP 4.0 Bug #9186 Updated: string compare with "==" does not work correctly

How is this? I modified what Zeev said a wee bit: == is a 'loose' comparison operator [1]. In most cases, this is more convenient - the operator does the right thing without needing any coaxing. In some cases, things will happen that are confusing - particularly when comparing values that have leading zeros (0) or when comparing very long numbers that are inside a string. The basic rule to follow is this: Character-by-character comparison is performed only if both arguments are strings and at least one of the strings does not look like a number [2]. Another way to state this rule is: - If at least one of the arguments is not a string, a numeric comparison is made. - If both arguments are strings, but both of them look like numbers, a numeric comparison is made. - If both arguments are strings (and at least one of them doesn't look like a number), a string comparison is made. [1] If you need to perform an exact comparison between two values, take a look at the 'strict' comparison operator (===) and the strcmp() function. [2] See the manual section on types and strings to learn what rules PHP follows for recognising numbers within strings. (Thanks to Zeev for clarifying this issue.) --zak