Adding binary operator: !== and changing !=.

[HelgeffegleH]

Hello 👋 .

New:
operand1 !== operand2,
x !== y is equivalent to !(x == y) (always case sensitive)
x != y is changed to be equivalent to !(x = y) (never case sensitive)

Example:

msgbox 'a' !== 'A' ; 1
stringcasesense 'on'
msgbox 'a' != 'A' ; 0, previously 1

Reason:
Convenience, readability (subjective), predictability. Probably some performance gain in eg, (x !== y) vs !(x == y)

Cheers.

[Lexikos]

I like that = and != would be more symmetrical, although <= and >= are similarly combined with = but are still dependent on StringCaseSense.

[HelgeffegleH]

Hello.

<= and >= are similarly combined with = but are still dependent on StringCaseSense.

It might seem natural to implement <== and >== to be case sensitive and change <= and >= to never be case sensitive. However, I had something else in mind, I had planned, but not finished planning, to implement a strCompare function to replace <, >, <= and >= for string compairsons, they would then only do numeric compairsons. I do not think <, >, ... are useful for string compairsons in general. Typically, there is a loss of information which require an extra compairsion, eg,

if stra < strb
	; A
else if stra > strb
	; B
else
	; C

vs.

result := strCompare(stra, strb)
if result < 0
	; A
else if result > 0
	; B
else
	; C 

Also, it has already become clear that the ability to have both string and number types on either side of the operator causes confusion. That is, eg, vara > varb may be

• 1) string comparison if one variable is a pure number but the other is a non-numeric string
• 2) string comparison if both variables are strings, numeric or not.
• 3) numeric comparison if one of the variables is a pure number and the other is a numeric string, or both are pure numbers.

strCompare would have option to select case sensitivity or locale, I think it would be nice to be able to choose which locale to use too. Maybe something like StartingPos and/or Length parameters would be useful too, I leave it to the readers imagination to figure what I mean.

<, >, ... would throw for non numeric operands..

In contrast, I think = == != !== are very useful for string compairson. Also, == and !== does memcmp which I guess <== and >== would do too, although I'm not sure that is very useful.

Cheers.