# If statement executing when comparing equality of hyphen

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/if-statement-executing-when-comparing-equality-of-hyphen/77230>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [March 1, 2022, 11:30am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/if-statement-executing-when-comparing-equality-of-hyphen/77230 "2022-03-01T11:30:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![imantha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/6a8cbe/32.png) [@imantha](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/imantha)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2022, 11:30am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/if-statement-executing-when-comparing-equality-of-hyphen/77230/1 "2022-03-01T11:30:51Z")

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Hi I am wondering what I am doing incorrectly here,

```julia
somestring = "2021_10_20-sess05-spk_M_C_010.pdf"

if somestring[11] != "-"
    @show somestring[11],"incorrect"
end

>>>
("-", incorrect)

```

It shouldnt be executing since the 11th characters of the string is equal to “-” but it does. I have also tried with `!==` resulting in the same result.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![oheil](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/oheil/32/220745_2.png) [@oheil](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/oheil)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2022, 12:07pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/if-statement-executing-when-comparing-equality-of-hyphen/77230/2 "2022-03-01T12:07:37Z")

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What you want is

```julia
julia> if somestring[11] != '-'
           @show somestring[11],"incorrect"
       end

```

see:

```julia
julia> somestring[11]
'-': ASCII/Unicode U+002D (category Pd: Punctuation, dash)

julia> typeof("-")
String

```

Edit: @stevengj is right, corrected.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![stevengj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stevengj/32/71_2.png) [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2022, 12:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/if-statement-executing-when-comparing-equality-of-hyphen/77230/3 "2022-03-01T12:57:18Z")

</div>

> [@oheil](#):
>
> `if somestring[11] != Char('-')`

No need to chall `Char` here — `'-'` is already a `Char`.