why is '01' == '1.'?

Hi all, I realize that 1 == '01' and 1 == '1.', but why is this next code also bool(true)? <?php var_dump('1.' == '01'); ?> In this case, a string is explicitly being compared to a string, and yet both are being converted to an int prior to comparison. I can understand that implicit type conversion is needed when comparing strings to ints, but this can be dangerous. phpDocumentor, for instance uses this code: if (in_array(substr($ltrimword, 0, 2), array('1.', '0.'))) and assumes that it will only match either '1.' or '0.', but in fact, it will match '01', '1.', '0.', '00', and as such if this happens to be encountered, it can cause an infinite loop in phpDocumentor eating up all memory (bad - will be fixed in next release). Of course, I can fix this by using === for each element instead of in_array(), but this is extremely non-intuitive and dangerous behavior in the underlying PHP implementation. The manual says nothing about auto-conversion of strings to ints when comparing two strings that satisfy is_numeric(). My question is whether this is a documentation or an internal PHP error? Greg