Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=54547&edit=1
ID: 54547 Comment by: c at hotmail dot com Reported by: peter dot ritt at gmx dot net Summary: wrong equality of string numbers Status: Verified Type: Bug Package: Unknown/Other Function Operating System: linux PHP Version: 5.3.6 Assigned To: dmitry Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: "In the majority of cases when dealing with HTTP requests and database results, which is what PHP deals with most, the loose comparison makes life easiest on the developer." By 'the developer' I assume you mean people who can't type (string) or (int) ? No other language has this issue because they aren't designed around programmers who do not really understand how to program. Please make the developer's life easier by making comparisons make sense. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2012-04-12 20:38:48] elementation at gmail dot com It's absolutely unreal that this is even a discussion. PHP, the world doesn't take you seriously and with bugs like this you provide further fodder. Principle of Least Surprise â this should be a string comparison. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2012-04-12 20:32:57] b at hotmail dot vom I would like to point out Perl is a weakly typed language, just like PHP, and has no issue with these cases. It's pretty weak from the developers to hide behind the "But PHP is weakly typed!" argument. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2012-04-12 17:09:41] riel at surriel dot com Conversion of numeric-looking strings to numbers does not have to be a problem, as long as the code in the back end uses arbitrary-precision math. This is slower than comparing a type that fits in a CPU register, but once you have already spent the time to do an automatic type conversion, that really does not matter. When it comes to an operator like ==, every digit matters. Having == return false when two items are different violates the principle of least surprise. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2012-04-12 17:03:32] jacob at fakku dot net @rasmus I just wanted to point out the issue mentioned in that article and how I felt it applied to this situation. At least to me, it seems to me that it's a big deal when '9223372036854775807' == '9223372036854775808' returns true, even if it's an edge case. But you're right about just using ===, which I will do if I ever run into this situation. After doing a bit more research I can understand why it is the way it is and I was probably too hasty to jump into this thread. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2012-04-12 16:53:54] ras...@php.net @jacob PHP has two sets of comparison operators as well. == and === They aren't numeric and string, they are loose and strict. In the majority of cases when dealing with HTTP requests and database results, which is what PHP deals with most, the loose comparison makes life easiest on the developer. In your case when comparison huge numeric strings that won't fit in any numeric type, a strict comparison is needed: $ php -r 'var_dump("61529519452809720693702583126814" === "61529519452809720000000000000000");' bool(false) (and hopefully you aren't actually using md5 for password hashing) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=54547 -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=54547&edit=1