When you get access to a time machine, go back in time and have this argument with the poor grad student who committed this sin :) In assembler, comparisons ge

When you get access to a time machine, go back in time and have this argument with the poor grad student who committed this sin :) In assembler, comparisons generally have a result of zero when things are the same because hardware works that way. If the difference between two voltages is zero, they "null" and are the same. In a pidgin, non-real assembler I'm making up: MOV AX,A_VARIABLE MOV BX,B_VARIABLE CMP AX,BX ;; or maybe AND AX,BX or XOR AX,BX because flags JNE THEY_ARE_NOT_EQUAL JMP THEY_ARE_EQUAL ... THEY_ARE_EQUAL: ... THEY_ARE_NOT_EQUAL: In 'C' if I am really concerned about this, I will: const bool TheThingMatches = (strcmp(a,b)==0); Edit: It ate my line breaks.