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From: Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.javascript
Subject: Re: I don't get it
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2021 15:47:17 +0100
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The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:

> On 09/04/2021 20:01, John G Harris wrote:
>> On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 10:03:13 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
>> <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>    <snip>
>>> After spending two days some years ago I discovered that IE and Firefox
>>> differed in their handling of comparisons of numerical and string data,
>>> and that something like
>>>
>>> if('1'== 1)
>>>
>>> was handled differently in each browser.
>>>
>>> As with all loosely typed languages, bugs in your code are trumped by
>>> bugs in the language itself.
>>
>> Was that before or after they claimed to conform to ECMA 262? If
>> after, one or both browsers had a bug, not the language. If before,
>> that's what you get with USPs.
>
> It was around 2007 give or take. IE6 and XP was current. I coded for
> firefox, it broke in IE6.
>
> I actually checked the language spec. As far as I cam remember the
> spec was explicit, that you converted to whatever the target of an
> assignement was in a mixed type operation, but in a conditional there
> was no assignment type...

So you looked in the wrong place.  I don't think that adds much useful
information.  ECMA 262, 3rd edition (2000) is very clear about the
conversions required by the == operator (section 11.9.1 and 11.9.3).
For the record, the string should be converted to a number (and the
algorithm for doing that is given in great detail too).

So it's not an issue with the specification.  Testing in IE6 running on
XP I find that the conversion is done correctly.  Did Mozilla really
have such a crude bug, and if so, did you really code for that despite
the specification being clear?

-- 
Ben.