Operator Overoverloading

Studying part of a large complex middleware for a management web application, and wondering why this:
InitechString str1, str2;
...
if(!(str1 != str2))
{
    ...
}

occurred almost as often as this:
InitechString str1, str2;
...
if(str1 == str2)
{
    ...
}

I dug a little deeper and found...


// CASE-SENSITIVE COMPARISON
//
int InitechString::operator==(const InitechString& r) const
{
    return !strcmp(m_ptr, r.m_ptr);
}
// CASE-NONSESTIVE COMPARISON
//
int InitechString::operator!=(const InitechString& r) const
{
    return !!strcmp(m_ptr, r.m_ptr);
}

>>6
First of all, it should be uppercase, because of the Turkish letter i.
Second, case-insensitive comparison could be faster because it doesn't need to allocate the entire copy of the string, it should only call upper() for individual characters.