Comparing 2 exact same strings returns false

One of your strings (probably the one from the DB) might be null-terminated. I've tested the following

$foo = "abc\0";
$bar = "abc";
echo "$foo\n$bar\n";
if($foo == $bar)
  echo "Equal.";
else
  echo "Not equal."

Output is

abc
abc
Not equal.

Try var_dump-ing both values, check their lengths and inspect them using view-source. They are different in someway.

Try using the binary-safe comparison for String:

result = strcmp($str1, $str2);

If the result is 0, then both are the same. Otherwise, they aren't.

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