A string doesn't equal itself

[Richard Gaskin]

J. Landman Gay wrote:

> Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but Mark Waddingham has just 
> commented on the bug I submitted for this. He verifies what we've been 
> discussing -- it's an overflow problem due to interpreting the string as 
> a number -- and says he thinks its a bug. It is targeted to be fixed for 
> the next dp release.
> 
> The fix involves doing a string comparison rather then a numeric 
> comparison if either operand overflows. The bug number is 4651 if anyone 
> is curious.

The buffer overflow check is a good first move.

Does he also have an opinion about treating string literals as numbers?

I can understand attempting to coerce to numbers if two string literals 
have an arithmetic operator between them, e.g.:

   "5" + "5"

...but if quoted and merely checking for equivalence, offhand I can 
think of no case where these wouldn't be true:

   "5" is "5"

   "55e555" is "55e555"

   "a" = "a"


> BTW, I'm very pleased with how quickly bugs are being addressed these 
> days. I've entered a few over the last week or so and they've all been 
> attended to promptly. If anyone has an issue that they haven't yet 
> entered into the bug database, I'd say now is a great time to do it. 
> They're combing through there at a pretty good clip.

Yes indeed.  My In Box has been busy processing their update notices as 
they knock those off.  Good work, Team Rev!

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com