STRCMP doesn't work

[Wim Roffel]

I have a query that looks for a certain string in a field. So you get code like:
AND !STRCMP(myfield,"'.mysqli_real_escape_string($myvar).'")';

I tried variations like leaving out mysqli_real_escape_string() but the outcome is always the same: there is never a match.

Yet:
- the strings have the same length
- on visual inspection they are the same.
- when I retrieve the string from the database and compare it with PHP's strcmp function they match.

My string is rather short (63 positions), it contains Hebrew script and linefeeds. But I cannot find documentation that this should be a problem. So I am puzzled. What could this be?