Weird comparison error.

I don't need anything fixed, I'm just curious about something I noticed. I'm doing a comparison between a variable and a hard coded char. Like this: if ($k1 == "n") The variable is usually the first key in an array (0) so it should usually evaluate false, but it was true every time until I changed it to: if ($k1 === "n") So I'm assuming that it decided that since $k1 was an int to convert "n" to an int (which would be 0) and conclude that 0 does indeed equal "n". So I decided for fun to try: if ("n" == $k1) And it still was true everytime. So why does it always try convert my literal to an int instead of use the variable as a string? Just curious. Thanks. -- Rob