sameequal

Sameequal is a term used in information science and data engineering to describe a relation between two values that are considered equal after an agreed-upon normalization or canonicalization process. It is not a standard mathematical equality but an equivalence relation determined by transformations that map diverse representations to a single canonical form.

Definition: Two values a and b are sameequal if a normalization function f maps them to the same canonical form: f(a) = f(b). The specific function f is defined by the domain or application and may include trimming whitespace, case-folding, removing leading zeros, unit conversion, or date normalization. Because f is chosen by convention, sameequal is context-dependent and may vary across projects.

Examples: Two strings "00123" and "123" can be sameequal under a numeric normalization that strips leading zeros. Dates like "2020-01-02" and "02/01/2020" may be sameequal under a date-parsing canonical form. Measurements such as "3 m" and "300 cm" can be sameequal under a unit-normalization rule.

Formal properties: If the normalization is deterministic and total, sameequal is an equivalence relation: reflexive, symmetric, and transitive. It does not imply exact identity or exact textual equality.

Applications: Data deduplication, data integration, caching, and content-addressable storage rely on sameequal to recognize records that represent the same real-world entity despite representation differences.

See also: Equivalence relation, Normalization, Canonical form, Data deduplication.