Home Backend Development PHP Tutorial Detailed explanation of PHP's == operator string comparison usage and its side effects examples

Detailed explanation of PHP's == operator string comparison usage and its side effects examples

Jun 21, 2017 am 09:35 AM
php string Compare usage operator

In some cases, PHP will convert numerical data (such as string containing numbers, etc.) into numerical processing, == operator is one of them. When using the == operator to loosely compare two strings, PHP will convert the numerical string into a numerical value for comparison. The following experiment confirms this conclusion:

<?php
var_dump(&#39;01&#39; == 1);
?>
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The output result of the above code is : bool(true)

Therefore, when comparing strings, it is recommended to use the === operator to strictly check the string, or use functions such as strcmp() , thereby avoiding possible problems.

In addition, the commonly used in_array() function also has weak type problems, see the following code:

<?php
var_dump(in_array(&#39;01&#39;, array(&#39;1&#39;)));
?>
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The output result of the above code is: bool(true)
I believe that PHP programmers who have used this function to perform security checks know what kind of security problems this will cause, right? Fortunately, the in_array() function provides us with a third parameter. Setting it to true can turn on the mandatory type checking mechanism of the in_array() function, as shown in the following code:

<?php 
var_dump(in_array(&#39;01&#39;, array(&#39;1&#39;), true)); 
?>
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The output result is : bool(false)
Since PHP is a weakly typed language, that is to say, the concept of data type is weakened in PHP. Therefore, if you ignore the data type too much when programming (which is also a common problem among most PHP programmers), some problems will occur and even lead to security vulnerabilities. Finally, as the annoying saying goes, strictly check and filter external data.

Side effects

$a = &#39;212345678912000005&#39;; 
$b = &#39;212345678912000001&#39;; 
var_dump($a == $b);
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The output of this code is bool(true), indicating that this judgment will conclude that the two are equal. Similar characteristics are in The third parameter of the in_array() function is false or not set. The reason is to first determine whether the string is a number, then convert it to long or double (C language data type) and then determine - use zendi_smart_strcmp. However, the comments in the source code say that the statement considers overflow situations

} else if (dval1 == dval2 && !zend_finite(dval1)) { 
    /* Both values overflowed and have the same sign, 
     * so a numeric comparison would be inaccurate */ 
    goto string_cmp; 
}
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dval1 and dval2 are the values ​​​​of two strings converted to double types respectively. But why is this still the case?
Solution, use Three equal signs "===" replace two equal signs "==", and the in_array() function sets the third parameter to true: in_array('val', $array, true).

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