Comparing two variables in Python

Question

I'm trying to test for equality of a and b here. I'm not sure why the output prints 'not equal' even though both a and b equates to '75', which is the same value.

a = (len(products)) #products is a dictionary, its length is 75
b = (f.read()) #f is a txt file that contains only '75'

if(str(a) == str(b)):
    print ('equal')
else:
    print ('not equal')

Possible duplicate of [How to compare string and integer in python?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17661829/how-to-compare-string-and-integer-in-python) — TemporalWolf, Jun 13 '17 at 18:20
@TemporalWolf Hi, I've tried converting it to string as well however it's output is still 'not equal' — tan, Jun 13 '17 at 18:21
@John you would want to convert the string to int, as the string is probably `"75\n"`: `int(b)` will fix the issue. — TemporalWolf, Jun 13 '17 at 18:22

cs95 · Accepted Answer · 2017-06-13T18:23:48.267

3

Add an int() around the f.read() to typecast the str to an int.

>>> b = f.read().strip() # call strip to remove unwanted whitespace chars
>>> type(b)
<type 'str'>
>>>
>>> type(int(b))
<type 'int'>
>>>
>>> b = int(b)

Now you can compare a and b with the knowledge that they'd have values of the same type.

File contents are always returned in strings/bytes, and you need to convert/typecase accordingly.

edited Jun 13 '17 at 18:23

answered Jun 13 '17 at 18:21

cs95

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 13 '17 at 18:22

0

The value of 'a' is 75 the integer while the value of 'b' is "75" the string. When calculated if equal the result will be false because they are not the same type. Try casting b to an integer with:

b = int(b)

answered Jun 13 '17 at 18:22

Walkire

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Comparing two variables in Python

2 Answers2