The equality operator (==) and the variable assignment operator are not equivalent even though they both use the equals sign. The equality operator works in several different ways depending on the variables being used with it. There are two main behaviors: string equality and numeric equality. The left side of an equality operation determines the behavior that will occur. The result of an equality operation is a Boolean value.
The inequality operator (!=) compares two values and returns a Boolean result of true if the values are not equal.
If the left side of the equality expression is a string, then the right side will be converted to a string value before a string comparison is performed. Note that the equality/inequality operators are NOT case-sensitive. For example, the equality operator would consider "xMatters" and "xmatters" to be the same, and would return true.