vm.load causes assertEq() to fail on seemingly same strings

[ghost]

I have a simple contract that just sets a string private state variable in contract's slot 1.

Below, I write a test that is supposed to set that private string variable to a new value and then I go in and read it.

function test_non_owner_can_view_password() public {
	// owner sets a new password
	string memory newPassword = "Nicenew#pwd123";
	vm.prank(address(owner));
	passwordStore.setPassword(newPassword);

	// non-owner can see what the new password is
	vm.startPrank(address(1));
	bytes32 value = vm.load(address(passwordStore), bytes32(uint256(1)));
	string memory pwd = string(abi.encodePacked(value));
	console.log(pwd); // we can see the password here
	assertEq(abi.encodePacked(newPassword), abi.encodePacked(pwd));
}

if I run the test with -vvvv, I can clearily see why its failing. The byte arrays are not same.

├─ emit log_named_bytes(key:       Left, val: 0x4e6963656e657723707764313233)
├─ emit log_named_bytes(key:      Right, val: 0x4e6963656e65772370776431323300000000000000000000000000000000001c)

If I convert to string, it still fails, even though the results appear to be the same.

Assert with:

assertEq(
	string(abi.encodePacked(newPassword)),
	string(abi.encodePacked(pwd))
);

Results in

├─ emit log(: Error: a == b not satisfied [string])
├─ emit log_named_string(key:       Left, val: Nicenew#pwd123)
├─ emit log_named_string(key:      Right, val: Nicenew#pwd123)

The extra characters that are returned from vm.load() (i.e. 1c) correspond to the number of hex digits in the length of the string but because they are there, how can i get these values to be equal? For example, if I bytes32(abi.encodePacked("Nicenew#pwd123")), I will get 0x4e6963656e657723707764313233000000000000000000000000000000000000 which still is not equal to 0x4e6963656e65772370776431323300000000000000000000000000000000001c.

How can I get around this?

[ghost]

Answered here

https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/155716/asserteq-fails-on-seemingly-same-strings