• Lunya \ she/it
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    11 months ago

    I still don’t understand the === operator

    Edit: I think a more type strict ==? Pretty sure I understand the point of typescript now.

    • @SzethFriendOfNimi
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      11 months ago

      So in JavaScript there’s the assignment

      =
      

      and the comparator is

      ==
      

      Since there’s no types JS will do implicit conversion before comparison when using == in a case like this

      if(false == '0'){
          //this is true
      }
      

      But with === it doesn’t. It means literally compare these

      if(false === '0'){
          //this is false
      }else{
          //so this will execute instead 
      }
      

      But this, however, will

      var someState = false;
       if(someState === false){
          //this is true
      }
      
    • @[email protected]
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      5411 months ago
      > 1 == 1
      true
      > 1 == '1'
      true
      > 1 === '1'
      false
      

      (from node REPL)

      Basically it’s the real equals sign perfection

    • @[email protected]
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      4111 months ago

      The short answer is that your language needs === when it fucked up the semantics of ==, but it’s also too popular and you can’t fix it without breaking half the web.

      • @marcos
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        211 months ago

        Or when it is something like Prolog, where equality is inherently a messy and complex concept.

    • @SmoothIsFast
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      2811 months ago

      It’s like the ==, but there’s one more =

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      It’s also important if you’re checking hashes (at least, it was - if you’re using correct hashing algorithm that isn’t ancient, you will not have this problem).

      Because if you take for example “0e462097431906509019562988736854” (which is md5(“240610708”), but also applicable to most other hashing algorithms that hash to a hex string), if(“0e462097431906509019562988736854” == 0) is true. So any other data that hashes to any variantion of “0e[1-9]+” will pass the check, for example:

      md5("240610708") == md5("hashcatqlffzszeRcrt")

      that equals to

      "0e462097431906509019562988736854" == "0e242700999142460696437005736231"

      which thanks to scientific notation and no strict type checking can also mean

      0462097431906509019562988736854 == 0242700999142460696437005736231

      which is

      0 == 0 `

      I did use md5 as an example because the strings are pretty short, but it’s applicable to a whole lot of other hashes. And the problem is that if you use one of the strings that hash to a magic hash in a vulnerable site, it will pass the password check for any user who’s password also hashes to a magic hash. There’s not really a high chance of that happening, but there’s still a lot of hashes that do hash to it.

      • @[email protected]
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        111 months ago

        If you’re checking passwords, you should be using constant time string checking, anyway.

        More likely, you should let your bcrypt library do it for you.

    • @[email protected]
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      1611 months ago

      JS’s == has some gotchas and you almost never want to use it. So === is what == should have been.

      All examples are true:

      "1" == true
      [1, 2] == "1,2" 
      " " == false
      null == undefined 
      

      It isn’t that insane. But some invariants that you may expect don’t hold.

      "" == 0
      "0" == 0
      "" != "0" 
      
      • @Feathercrown
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        511 months ago

        One neat feature is you can compare to both null and undefined at the same time, without other falsey values giving false positives. Although that’s not necessary as often now that we have nullish coalescing and optional chaining.

        • @[email protected]
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          211 months ago

          I just tested and Terser will convert v === null || v === undefined to null==v. Personally I would prefer to read the code that explicitly shows that it is checking for both and let my minifier/optimizer worry about generating compact code.

          • @SzethFriendOfNimi
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            011 months ago

            Try changing to const === variable. That’s most likely what’s it doing to minimize the risk of accidental assignment.

              • @SzethFriendOfNimi
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                111 months ago

                I agree it shouldn’t. But I’ve seen linters that automatically change it since they seem to be forcing practical conventions sometimes.

    • BougieBirdie
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      611 months ago

      The other comments explains it in pretty good detail, but when I was learning my teacher explained it sort of like a mnemonic.

      1 + 1 = 2 is read “one plus one equals two”

      1 + 1 == 2 is read “one plus one is equal to two”

      1 + 1 === 2 is read “one plus one is really equal to two”

      And you hit the nail on the head, is that === is type explicit while == is implicit.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        I’d use something like:

        = becomes

        == equals

        === is identical to

        It’s funny how everyone thinks “equals” in this context should be “identical to” when, in normal language, it doesn’t really mean that at all!

    • @ShortFuse
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      11 months ago

      You don’t need Typescript, you need an linter (eslint).

      === is your basic equality like most languages. == will implicitly cast type.

      The breakdown is here: https://262.ecma-international.org/5.1/#sec-11.9.3

      Modern JS says to never use == unless you’re comparing against null or undefined.