See Checking/polling a balance of an address in Electrum via the command line/RPC
Bitcoin Cash is essentially a clone of the existing Bitcoin blockchain with one important feature: additional block size capacity. Those who owned Bitcoin before the split now own an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash, meaning Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin each now have 16.5 million units in circulation. Multiply Bitcoin Cash’s recent price of $607 times 16.5 million units, and you arrive at a market cap of $10.8 billion, making it the third-most valuable cryptocurrency at around 16% of Bitcoin’s $69 billion market value.
There is one other HUGE difference - it has no platform of use or distribution - meaning the webstores that take bitcoin - do not automatically take bitcoin cash - and the ATM network that sells bitcoin does not just automatically vend also bitcoin cash.
As to the " additional block size capacity " it is likely to work itself out in favor of Bitcoin itself via an upgrade to the Bitcoin network code. see the article above
**** EDIT 9/3/2017 ****
There was a down vote because a reader did not understand the plain answer - which does answer the question.
The simple answer is NO for the reasons in the answer
Bitcoin is a very technical digital currency more people want to "buy" to invest in hopes it will increase rather than use it for an international cash currency it was written to be. In that vein, most websites that accept "bitcoin" - do not interchange "bitcoin cash". That is the real question being asked here in the end.
If a person buys something on our website in bitcoin, it will send a bitcoin address - not a bitcoin cash address
Bitcoin "classic" is the term defined at https://bitcoinclassic.com/ and it is in essence the original Bitcoin
Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash are different - and yes "cash" is a fork of what one would know as the "Classic" form of Bitcoin. Bitcoin Classic technically has features that fix Bitcoin issues right now - but it is STILL programatically "Bitcoin" - not "Bitcoin Cash"
Read https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/four-key-disagreements-between-bitcoin-classic-and-bitcoin-core-four-key-disagreements-between-bitcoin-classic-and-bitcoin-core-four-key-disagreements-between-bitcoin-classic-and-bitcoin-core-1457106744/
To downvote a correct answer encourages parties NOT to answer at all - after all I know the answer, and I do not believe I should be examined to explain it to someone in a way they want to hear it when I am not paid of this and the downvote simply means the reader does not understand the clear answer
**** EDIT 9/5/2017 ****
I am going to edit this one last time to re-iterate what the original question was. I will state upfront I have no intention of downloading "Bitcoin Classic" as a piece of software to test and explore where or what I might run into as a bug. For one it appears to require a full node server implementation to do so. The daemon we use right now has gone through many iterations of versions solving and squashing bugs that popped up here and there and no one in their right mind would look to something new and unproven to possibly complicate things that are working.
So no one should really care about Bitcoin Cash if they are using it as a currency - unless they are trying to buy something a low price in hopes it will outstrip Bitcoin in a race to a climb so they can sell it at a higher profit.
The view of Bitcoin should be as a currency - not an investment or technical argument - and recently governments have begun attacking it for being used as a method to raise capital. Investors in their "greed" contribute to its volital price, and Bitcoin exchanges re-positioning themselves in a "stock market" look and feel - feed this "investment" mentality.
When it comes to legitimate businesses implementing ways to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment, there are only a few ways to do it. All of them involve waiting on the transaction to clear - so a retail store is not good option unless one is willing to take a risk on a loss or make the customer to wait on a a confirmed transaction.
All of them involve that one put up a full server and invite every hacker to attack you, go with a thin client like Electrum as I showed here => Thin command line-capable client for Linux which requires some programming skills and a Webstore and Linux type server to have root access to Linux features for, or the most developed commercial solution with the most options out there that ties one to an onerous solution use - https://bitpay.com.
None of these are Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin Classic solutions
Looking at the tar file for linux for Bitcoin Classic - there is quite a bit of work to set it up and guess work too according to https://bitcoinclassic.com/linuxbuilds.html . To be blunt, many commercial websites are running CentOS7 which is a flavor of Red Hat and they are looking to use "yum" via RPM files to keep their systems up to date automatically and "sane" with proper dependencies, and "Bitcoin Classic" has no RPM version at all. I digress - because a technical discussion has no value if the product in this case "Bitcoin Classic" and "Bitcoin Cash" have no viable commercial platform it would be used on as a payment acceptance method in a webstore.
Do not get me wrong - https://bitpay.com - has the most open source solutions collected in one place, but using it also means paying their fee structure and especially if using their "Bitpay" VISA card. It is 1% versus the 3% that a bankcard charges. Bitpay - has a user agreement that translates a Bitcoin transaction basically back into a non-permanent credit card type transaction and has a focus on using Bitcoin as an actual payment solution like VISA and Mastercard; and on our website there is a Bitcoin payment method one can select instead of the bankcard route. If you use any of Bitpay's solution software for your webstore / webcart - you must buy into the whole thing as they have implemented it. They will serve you a Request address to send to.
You will NOT find any mention of Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin Classic at https://Bitpay.com at all because they are actually oxymorons to the Bitcoin issue of using Bitcoin as a cash equivalent currency. You need to send it - it needs to arrive as a permanent payment- and the seller then makes the risky decision to immediately convert it to local currency - or not.
Bitcoin classic states on their website " Bitcoin Classic stands for the original Bitcoin as Satoshi described it, "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". "; and that is how I defined it to answer the question - with the reality that the other side of the question is HOW businesses can accept it as such and how it has also been polluted by commercial efforts to offer "Bitcoin" and protect themselves from potential fraud and customer complaints when they are providing the tools for businesses to use it defraud customers potentially.
In January of 2016 this article was written, and it is still true today => https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/01/19/r-i-p-bitcoin-its-time-to-move-on/?utm_term=.3781ce190f21 as the technical argument about ALL digital currencies range on - and "Bitcoin Classic" while touting it is 100% compatible with "simple" Bitcoin is no different.
So if someone wants to engage in a technical discussion about the idiosyncrasies of something that illustrates how pollution in the air is why all of those suffer if forced to breath it - that is obvious and you can count me out.
Bitcoin is a self minting currency and that is not really a good thing, as more persons get interested in it. China recently put the brakes on using Bitcoin to raise money for business efforts - because after all Bitcoin is flooding in there; see => https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/05/bitcoin-dips-another-200-after-chinas-cryptocurrency-crackdown.html and the reasons should be obvious with about 70 percent of the Bitcoin miners located in China. That self minting money is making a lot of miners over there fairly wealthy processing Bitcoin transactions. They do not CARE what transaction they process Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin or Bitcoin Classic - they are going to get paid no matter what. See https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/
The curious thing is much of the world is not looking at "where" the processing power behind Bitcoin - of any type - is located.
So the answer to the question is what I addressed - Bitcoin Classic is for all intents and purposes the same as "Bitcoin" - with the exception that it is relatively new and technically not supported well but with features supposed to solve issues that Bitcoin has right now; and I would never trust my business to Bitcoin Classic - especially right now - because it may also harbor bugs and other issues - in addition to the fact that it is just not supported out there yet - and certainly is no drop in replacement for what we use right now. Bitcoin Cash is a fork and we are not even "looking" at looking to support it.
The answer remains is no they are not the same and Bitcoin Cash - yes - is a fork or Bitcoin - it matters not whether you call it Classic or Original