How does the comparison operator '==' differ from '===' in a programming language?

In PHP, the == operator performs a comparison with type juggling (loose comparison). This means that the values may be converted to a common type before comparison, which can sometimes lead to unexpected results.

The === operator performs a strict comparison — it checks both the value and the data type. If the types do not match, the result will be false.

Example:

var_dump(0 == '0');   // true, because the string '0' is converted to the number 0
var_dump(0 === '0');  // false, because the types are different (int and string)