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

OK, I was way off base in my reasoning... :-) Thanks for the clarification Zeev and Zak. Alan. > 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