A string doesn't equal itself

[Bill Marriott]

Richard,

What about

put "3.141592653589793238461" is "3.141592653589793238462"

Guess what Rev says? (True.) Longstanding behavior in xTalk, going back to 
HyperCard days.

but

put "3.141592653589793238461" & null is "3.141592653589793238462" & null

returns false.

Seems like the "best practice" right now is: to coerce string-based 
evaluation over possible numeric evaluation, use the & null operation.


> 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"