Testing for equality is fundamental in computer science. And while it seems like a straightforward concept (Thing A is the same as Thing B, or it isn’t) there are some subtleties that can, at first, seem strange. For example, it seems a common source of confusion for those new to javascript is whether to use == or === when making an equality comparison. This post will explain the difference between these two operators and how to decide when to use one over the other.
First, some terminology about Javascript string equals: Double equals is officially known as the abstract equality comparison operator while triple equals is termed the strict equality comparison operator. The difference between them can be summed up as follows: Abstract equality will attempt to resolve the data types via type coercion before making a comparison. Strict equality will return false if the types are different. Consider the following example:
