Testing for equality in your PHP script? Take care!

Do you know what this program outputs?

<?php
$i = 0;
$j = 'test string';
if ($i == $j) { 
   echo 'equal';
} else {
   echo 'not equal';
}

This is how PHP works. Complaining is futile, as this developer discovered:
https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=39579

Answer: equal. It got me, too, recently!

Yes, in fact it was your submission and the reference to this bug report that motivated me to make this post. Thanks for documenting your findings so others will learn!

swguy:

Do you know what this program outputs?

<?php $i = 0; $j = 'test string'; if ($i == $j) { echo 'equal'; } else { echo 'not equal'; } ``` > > This is how PHP works. Complaining is futile, as this developer discovered: > <https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=39579> Personally I don't see why this is being called a bug. If you think about it, it doesn't make sense to compare a number variable with a string variable in the first place, so even if any given programming language does allow it (such as PHP) the results will be somewhat unpredictable. Most programming languages will treat/trap this as an error. As much as I like PHP, I find that it's not a good programming language to learn from, simply because it **does** allow loose typecasting, which teaches bad coding habits that will invariably cause this type of unexpected behaviour at times. Just my 2cents worth. Cheers Rod