# Equality Programmers frequently need to determine the equality of variables in relation to other variables. This is done using an equality operator. The most basic equality operator is the `==` operator. This operator does everything it can to determine if two variables are equal, even if they are not of the same type. For example, assume: ~~~ var foo = 42; var bar = 42; var baz = "42"; var qux = "life"; ~~~ `foo == bar` will evaluate to `true` and `baz == qux` will evaluate to `false`, as one would expect. However, `foo == baz` will *also* evaluate to `true` despite `foo` and `baz` being different types. Behind the scenes the `==` equality operator attempts to force its operands to the same type before determining their equality. This is in contrast to the `===` equality operator. The `===` equality operator determines that two variables are equal if they are of the same type *and* have the same value. With the same assumptions as before, this means that `foo === bar` will still evaluate to `true`, but `foo === baz` will now evaluate to `false`. `baz === qux` will still evaluate to `false`.