Why is constructing a URL with a mysql entry in PHP giving me a different String?

I'm writing some code to look at PTO assignment data, and noticed a strange problem where the URL didn't work when I generated it from my database entry, but did work when I entered the same string manually. When I echo them both strings look the same exactly, but when I equate them they are different. Is there some kind of hidden character or something with the encoding I can't see, and if so how do I fix it? I'm running the code using WAMPSERVER.

$pto = "assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=";
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);

$ReelFrame = $row['ReelFrame'];       // Should be "007358/0006" and looks to be correct.
$reelframearray = explode("/",$ReelFrame);
$gourla = $pto . $reelframearray[0] . "&frame=". $reelframearray[1];
$gourl = "assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=007358&frame=0006";
echo "$gourla <br>";
echo "$gourl <br>";
if ($gourl === $gourla){
 echo "same string";
} else {
 echo "different";
}

This is what the results look like:

assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=007358&frame=0006 
assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=007358&frame=0006 
different

I've narrowed it down to the mysql entry since replacing that with this:

$开发者_运维知识库ReelFrame = "007358/0006";

Makes the strings the same.

Thanks for any help. The column for ReelFrame is a VARCHAR if that makes any difference.

please try to var_dump() your both variables instead of echoing them - maybe there are some leading/trailing whitespaces, linebreaks or something like that.

EDIT: just as a note: you realy shouldn't save multiple values in one database-coumn. if ReelFrame consits of two values, make two colums out of it: Reel and Frame - and don't use charchar for this, it looks like they should be ints (and that will avoid you from saving whitespaces linebreaks or something like that accidentally)

The first thought that comes to my mind is \n character.

Try this:

$ReelFrame = trim($row['ReelFrame']);

I tried the trim() suggestion, but it doesn't seem to work. I'm not sure what kind of character it is inserting, but I guess trim isn't removing it.

I just tried the var_dump, and it does show the strings are different lengths though nothing else looks different. vardump of a ReelFrame entity compared with manual string:
string(20) "007358/0006"
string(11) "007358/0006"

likewise for the final string:
string(81) "assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=007358&frame=0006"
string(72) "assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&reel=007358&frame=0006"

trim() doesn't seem to make any difference on the entity so it's still showing 20. Are there any other invisible characters that trim might miss?