String equality failure in Python. What gives?

Question

Alright, I give up. I cannot understand the result I am getting from the following code (Python 2.6.6):

message.dest = message.dest.strip()
print type(message.dest)
print message.dest
if message.dest == 'UI':
    print "Equal!"
else:
    print "Not Equal!"

Somehow my output is:

<type 'str'>
UI
Not Equal!

Any ideas on what is going on here?

@Simon: see my answer, but in brief: No effort to resolve his own problem, this can only benefit OP, no-one else. — Marcin
– Marcin, Commented Mar 7, 2012 at 15:50
@Marcin, I have to disagree with your assessment. As edited this question serves as a valuable lesson in how to diagnose a string comparison problem. I don't see any need to reopen the question but it would be a shame if it were ever deleted. — Mark Ransom
– Mark Ransom, Commented Mar 7, 2012 at 16:57
@MarkRansom That was then, this is now. I have reopened the question. — Marcin
– Marcin, Commented Mar 7, 2012 at 17:37

animuson · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-07 18:48:27Z

6

Originally posted by OP in body of question. Converted to community wiki answer.

I just wanted to follow-up with what the problem was in case anyone else finds themselves in a similar situation.

The problem was message.dest had an ASCII-encoded character in the string, e.g.,

>>> repr(message.dest)
"'\\x00UI'"
>>> print message.dest
UI

Personally my confusion stemmed mostly from the fact that the object type was <type 'str'>. This highlights the danger of using print statements as a debugging tool.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

String equality failure in Python. What gives?

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related