A: 

In general when I code, I use == over ===, however, using the identity is more precise, and also, slightly faster (difference is minimal).

The difference between the two is likely irrelevant for whatever you need.

Dave Morgan  2010-06-16 13:01:36
IMHO `==` should be avoided when you can since it takes more human effort to correctly read how type juggling effects the statement (especially in PHP). With `===` it's either an exact match or it's not.
Kendall Hopkins  2010-06-16 13:06:32
I agree, and after looking into it more - im gunna modify my statement.
Dave Morgan  2010-06-16 13:09:27
+6  A: 

Testing for identity is always faster, because PHP does not have to Type Juggle to evaluate the comparison. However, I'd say the speed difference is in the realms of nanoseconds and totally neglectable.

Related reading:

Gordon  2010-06-16 13:02:03
+1. Just out of curiosity, I just run a quick test putting a `==` statement and a `===` in a loop so that they got executed 10 million times. There was no real difference between the two. Repeating the test several times `==` was sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but we're really talking about 1 ms difference...
nico  2010-06-16 14:15:58
@nico That would depend if `==` triggered a type conversion or not. You might have tested a case where you were comparing variables of the same type (or a case the equality operator doesn't even attempt conversion).
Artefacto  2010-07-08 12:50:16
+2  A: 

=== will be slightly faster, but more importantly, It enforces that $myVar will be a string so you don't have to worry about the possible effects of it being some other type.

Kendall Hopkins  2010-06-16 13:02:24

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