i don't see your point....what is your point, about not liking it? Seriously though, I think that too many programming teachers actually teach the "$foo == 0" way, which gets ingrained in a lot of us. if you think of the equality test as a weight scale, with each variable/constant being a weight, it should make it fit better for you. you can also have some fun with short circuit logic:

if ( 5 == $foo) print "tadaa";
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can become

( $foo -5) && print "tadaa";
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so you don't use == at all