This does not appear to the case in PHP 5.6, even for most strings with '==' gotchas: <?php if ('0e24') echo 'true'; else echo 'false'; outputs: true

This does not appear to the case in PHP 5.6, even for most strings with '==' gotchas: <?php if ('0e24') echo 'true'; else echo 'false'; outputs: true As far as I know the only strings that fail an if check are "" and "0". (Which is still a pitfall, but not one you'd hit with an MD5 hash)