# Compare condition for checking strings in watcher is not Working?

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/compare-condition-for-checking-strings-in-watcher-is-not-working/126882>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Tags:** elastic-stack-alerting\
**Created:** [April 5, 2018, 8:44am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/compare-condition-for-checking-strings-in-watcher-is-not-working/126882 "2018-04-05T08:44:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![spinscale](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/spinscale/32/25011_2.png) [@spinscale](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/spinscale)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2018, 9:22am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/compare-condition-for-checking-strings-in-watcher-is-not-working/126882/2 "2018-04-05T09:22:25Z")

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The compare condition works only for numerics.

You need to use painless, like this

```auto
return ctx.payload.hits.hits.get(0)._source.syslog_message.contains('lang.OutOfMemoryError')

```

--Alex

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