Check if two Strings are Equal in TypeScript

Check if two Strings are Equal in TypeScript #

Use the strict equality operator (===) to check if two strings are equal in TypeScript, e.g. if (str1 === str2) {}. The strict equality operator returns true if the strings are equal, otherwise false is returned.

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const str1 = 'hello';
const str2 = 'hello';

if (str1 === str2) {
  console.log('✅ strings are equal');
} else {
  console.log('⛔️ strings are NOT equal');
}

We used the strict equality (===) operator to check if two TypeScript strings are equal.

The operator returns a boolean result:

• true if the values are equal
• false if the values are not equal

When comparing strings with the strict equality (===) operator, comparisons are case sensitive.

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const str1 = 'hello';
const str2 = 'HELLO';

if (str1 === str2) {
  console.log('✅ strings are equal');
} else {
  // 👇️ this runs
  console.log('⛔️ strings are NOT equal');
}

If you need to make a case insensitive comparison, use the toLowercase() method on both strings.

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const str1 = 'hello';
const str2 = 'HELLO';

if (str1.toLowerCase() === str2.toLowerCase()) {
  // 👇️ this runs
  console.log('✅ strings are equal');
} else {
  console.log('⛔️ strings are NOT equal');
}

If you need to check if two strings are NOT equal, use the strict inequality (!==) operator.

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const str1 = 'hello';
const str2 = 'world';

if (str1 !== str2) {
  console.log('✅ strings are equal');
} else {
  console.log('⛔️ strings are NOT equal');
}

The strict inequality (!==) operator returns true if the values are not equal and false otherwise.

The strict equality (===) operator differs from the loose equality (==) operator in that it considers two values of different types to NOT be equal.

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const str = '100';
const num = 100;

// ⛔️ Error: This condition will always return 'false'
//  since the types 'number' and 'string' have no overlap.ts(2367)
if (str == num) {
  console.log('✅ strings are equal');
} else {
  console.log('⛔️ strings are NOT equal');
}

The example above uses the loose equality operator to check if the number 100 is equal to the string '100'.

This would evaluate to true if ran in JavaScript, but in TypeScript, the type checker throws an error.

It's much more intuitive to always use the strict equality (===) operator and stick to comparing values of the same type.

This means that two values of different types will never be equal, when using the strict equality operator.

It's always recommended to use the strict operators (!==, ===), because they don't try to coerce the values to the same type before comparing them and return more intuitive and easier to read results.