list doesn't contain its own members in Tcl

Question

I have a list containing one member, that member is the string <cmd_stichstudy1>XXDDR0_MA[12]. When I search for that string in the list (using lsearch) I get that the list doesn't contain it. I even get it when I search for the member of the list:

tcl> set nets_names

{<cmd_stichstudy1>XXDDR0_MA[12]}

tcl> lsearch $nets_names [lindex $nets_names 0]

-1

Why does this happen?

Answer 1

If you use -exact it will work the way you want.

% set nets_names {<cmd_stichstudy1>XXDDR0_MA[12]}
<cmd_stichstudy1>XXDDR0_MA[12]
% lsearch -exact $nets_names [lindex $nets_names 0]
0
%

Answer 2

lsearch has an unfortunate property of using glob-style matching by default.

To cite the manual:

If all matching style options are omitted, the default matching style is -glob.

So always pass -exact to lsearch unless you really want -glob.