Forum OpenACS Q&A: foreach..lindex...behavior??

Hi there..
I wrote this code:

1  set db [ns_db gethandle]
2  set sql_account "select accd_stat from table_a"
3  set accd_lists [database_to_tcl_list_list $db $sql_account]
4  set bbb ""
5
6  foreach accd $account_lists {
7    #set status1 "unstart"
8    set status1 [lindex $accd 0]
9    if { $status1 == "unstart" } {
10       set ccc "yess"
11   } else {
12       set ccc "damn"
13   }
14 
15   append bbb "$status1 >> $ccc
"
16  }

and they produce this output :
unstart >> damn

question is:
Why the if statement failed although the variable hold the same 
content as the specified condition ??? and if I commented line8 and
then uncomment line7, they works .... any ideas???

-Silly me-

but i think, database_to_tcl_list is not applicable whenever I expand
the sql query like:


select accd_id, accd_name, accd_date, accd_stat from table_a


bcoz it will fetch the accd_id only right?? 
any idea ???

try replacing { $status1 == "unstart" } with { [string equal $status1 "unstart"] }. It's more typing, but that way you are SURE that tcl is doing a string compare. Comparing empty variables with something else produces weird results. Don't know why, prolly something to do Tcl being a loosely typed language.