Can (a== 1 && a ==2 && a==3) ever evaluate to true

Question

Moderator note: Please resist the urge to edit the code or remove this notice. The pattern of whitespace may be part of the question and therefore should not be tampered with unnecessarily. If you are in the "whitespace is insignificant" camp, you should be able to accept the code as is.

Is it ever possible that (a== 1 && a ==2 && a==3) could evaluate to true in JavaScript?

This is an interview question asked by a major tech company. It happened two weeks back, but I'm still trying to find the answer. I know we never write such code in our day-to-day job, but I'm curious.

Answer 1

This is also possible using a series of self-overwriting getters:

(This is similar to jontro's solution, but doesn't require a counter variable.)

(() => {
    "use strict";
    Object.defineProperty(this, "a", {
        "get": () => {
            Object.defineProperty(this, "a", {
                "get": () => {
                    Object.defineProperty(this, "a", {
                        "get": () => {
                            return 3;
                        }
                    });
                    return 2;
                },
                configurable: true
            });
            return 1;
        },
        configurable: true
    });
    if (a == 1 && a == 2 && a == 3) {
        document.body.append("Yes, it’s possible.");
    }
})();

Answer 2

I don't see this answer already posted, so I'll throw this one into the mix too. This is similar to Jeff's answer with the half-width Hangul space.

var a = 1;
var ａ = 2;
var а = 3;
if(a == 1 && ａ == 2 && а == 3) {
    console.log("Why hello there!")
}

You might notice a slight discrepancy with the second one, but the first and third are identical to the naked eye. All 3 are distinct characters:

a - Latin lower case A
ａ - Full Width Latin lower case A
а - Cyrillic lower case A

The generic term for this is "homoglyphs": different unicode characters that look the same. Typically hard to get three that are utterly indistinguishable, but in some cases you can get lucky. A, Α, А, and Ꭺ would work better (Latin-A, Greek Alpha, Cyrillic-A, and Cherokee-A respectively; unfortunately the Greek and Cherokee lower-case letters are too different from the Latin a: α,ꭺ, and so doesn't help with the above snippet).

There's an entire class of Homoglyph Attacks out there, most commonly in fake domain names (eg. wikipediа.org (Cyrillic) vs wikipedia.org (Latin)), but it can show up in code as well; typically referred to as being underhanded (as mentioned in a comment, [underhanded] questions are now off-topic on PPCG, but used to be a type of challenge where these sorts of things would show up). I used this website to find the homoglyphs used for this answer.