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Why does "if ('0000' = '00e0')" return "true" when the hex. strings are unequal?

hexadecimal strings

Why does "if ('0000' = '00e0')" return "true" when the hex. strings are unequal?

by  RogerSpencer  Posted    (Edited  )
At first glance the two hex. strings appear to be unequal and normally one would expect "false". However, when the '=' operator is used for comparison, REXX first checks if both operands are numeric. '0000' is obviously numeric (zero) and '00e0' is, according to the REXX rules, also numeric and zero, it corresponds to the exponential method (mantissa.Eexponent) of writing a zero. Consequently the above comparison returns 'equal'.

If you really want to compare strings on a character-to-character basis, which is the case in this hex. comparison, use the '==' (exactly equal) operator.
Code: 
if ('0000' == '00e0')...
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