Jasmine JavaScript Testing - toBe vs toEqual

Question

Let\'s say I have the following:

var myNumber = 5;
expect(myNumber).toBe(5);
expect(myNumber).toEqual(5);

Both of the above tests will pass

Answer 1

Looking at the Jasmine source code sheds more light on the issue.

toBe is very simple and just uses the identity/strict equality operator, ===:

  function(actual, expected) {
    return {
      pass: actual === expected
    };
  }

toEqual, on the other hand, is nearly 150 lines long and has special handling for built in objects like String, Number, Boolean, Date, Error, Element and RegExp. For other objects it recursively compares properties.

This is very different from the behavior of the equality operator, ==. For example:

var simpleObject = {foo: 'bar'};
expect(simpleObject).toEqual({foo: 'bar'}); //true
simpleObject == {foo: 'bar'}; //false

var castableObject = {toString: function(){return 'bar'}};
expect(castableObject).toEqual('bar'); //false
castableObject == 'bar'; //true