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Comment by pestaa | Hacker News Reader

In this perspective, writing `strcmp` everywhere is not boilerplate, but a requirement.

(Such that

    strcmp('9223372036854775807', '9223372036854775808');

returns -1, meaning the strings are not equal.)

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No, you just need strict comparison (like you need it in JS and any other language with weak typing):

    php > var_dump('9223372036854775807' == '9223372036854775808');
    bool(true)
    php > var_dump('9223372036854775807' === '9223372036854775808');
    bool(false)

I beg your pardon, but you do not 'need it in JS', if 'it' is referring to using === instead of == to compare strings.

Here is what node.js says:

    > "9223372036854775807" == "9223372036854775808"
    false

Ah but more fun with Javascript

>>> "9223372036854775807" == "9223372036854775808" false

>>> 9223372036854775807 == "9223372036854775808" true

>>> 9223372036854775807 == 9223372036854775808 true

I believe the grandparent post is more referring to "general" use cases then this one. Personally I now default to strict comparison operators both in JS and PHP unless I explicitly want a loose comparison and end up missing most of these strange vagaries these days.

Not in this case, but it's commonly accepted that == is "broken" in JavaScript, and === should be the equality operator of choice most of the time.

The one case where I sometimes use == is if I want to check for "null" or "undefined". Even then it scares me.

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