title: Why can't I perform conditionals on environment variables in a node.js application
body: <p>When I execute this node.js application...</p>
  <pre><code>if(process.env.ENV_ARG === &quot;someValue&quot;) {
      console.log(&quot;conditional works...&quot;);
  } else {
      console.log(`ENV_ARG =&gt; ${process.env.ENV_ARG}`);
  }
  </code></pre>
  <p>with the following script...</p>
  <pre><code>  &quot;scripts&quot;: {
      &quot;dev&quot;: &quot;SET ENV_ARG=someValue &amp;&amp; node index.js&quot;
    },
  </code></pre>
  <p>the output is:</p>
  <pre><code>ENV_ARG =&gt; someValue 
  </code></pre>
  <p>I can't understand why the if statement evaluates to false. <br>
  When the contents of <code>process.env.ENV_ARG</code> are logged in the else-block, they should be accessible for the if statement above...at least I thought so...<br><br>
  Thanks in advance</p>