Widget: cannot compare exact same strings

It seems comparing two exact same strings in the widget display function does not result in true. I have saved the word ‘test’ in the textarea so the code below should result in displaying something like:

correct: test

But it always throws out false which means that the $textarea string value from the widget somehow differs from a normally assigned string.

I’ve tried a normal string comparison as well:

if($textarea == "test")

… and it still results as false.

Any ideas?

function widget($args, $instance) {
	extract($args);
	$title = apply_filters('widget_title', $instance['title']);
	$text = $instance['text'];
	$textarea = $instance['textarea'];
	$block = "test";

if(strcmp($textarea, $block) == 0) {
	echo '<p class="wp_widget_plugin_textarea">correct: '.$textarea.'</p>';
	} else {
	echo 'False';
	}

        echo '</div>';
        echo $after_widget;
}