Equality (relational operator)

In computer science, a relational operator is a programming language construct or operator that tests or defines some kind of relation between two entities. These include numerical equality (e.g., 5 = 5) and inequalities (e.g., 4 ≥ 3).

In programming languages that include a distinct boolean data type in their type system, like Pascal, Ada, or Java, these operators usually evaluate to true or false, depending on if the conditional relationship between the two operands holds or not. In languages such as C, relational operators return the integers 0 or 1, where 0 stands for false and any non-zero value stands for true.

An expression created using a relational operator forms what is termed a relational expression or a condition. Relational operators can be seen as special cases of logical predicates.

Equality is being used in many programming-language constructs and data types. It is used to test if an element already exists in a set, or to access to a value through a key. It is used in switch statements to dispatch the control flow to the correct branch, and during the unification process in logic programming.

One of the possible meaning of equality is that "if a equals to b, then we can use either a or b interchangeably in any context without noticing any difference". But this statement does not necessarily hold, particularly when taking into account mutability together with content equality.

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