strcmp, _fstrcmp

Description

Compare strings.

int strcmp( const char *string1, const char *string2 );

int __far _fstrcmp( const char __far *string1, const char __far *string2 );

Remarks

The strcmp and _fstrcmp functions compare string1 and string2 lexicographically and return a value indicating their relationship, as follows:

The strcmp and _fstrcmp functions operate on null-terminated strings. The string arguments to these functions are expected to contain a null character ('\0') marking the end of the string.

The _fstrcmp function is a model-independent (large-model) form of the strcmp function. The behavior and return value of _fstrcmp are identical to those of the model-dependent function strcmp, with the exception that the arguments are far pointers.

Both the _stricmp function (described later in this book) and the _strcmpi function compare strings by first converting them to their lowercase forms.

Note that two strings containing characters located between 'Z' and 'a' in the ASCII table ('[', '\', ']', '^', '_', and '`') compare differently depending on their case. For example, the two strings, "ABCDE" and "ABCD^", compare one way if the comparison is lowercase ("abcde" > "abcd^") and compare the other way ("ABCDE" < "ABCD^") if it is uppercase.

Return Value

The return values for these functions are described above.

Compatibility

strcmp

Standards:ANSI, UNIX

16-Bit:DOS, QWIN, WIN, WIN DLL

32-Bit:DOS32X

_fstrcmp

Standards:None

16-Bit:DOS, QWIN, WIN, WIN DLL

32-Bit:None

See Also

memcmp, _memicmp, strncat, strncmp, strncpy, _strnicmp, strrchr, strspn

Example

/* STRCMP.C */

#include <string.h>

#include <stdio.h>

char string1[] = "The quick brown dog jumps over the lazy fox";

char string2[] = "The QUICK brown dog jumps over the lazy fox";

void main( void )

{

char tmp[20];

int result;

/* Case sensitive */

printf( "Compare strings:\n\t%s\n\t%s\n\n", string1, string2 );

result = strcmp string1, string2 );

if( result > 0 )

strcpy( tmp, "greater than" );

else if( result < 0 )

strcpy( tmp, "less than" );

else

strcpy( tmp, "equal to" );

printf( "\tstrcmp: String 1 is %s string 2\n", tmp );

/* Case insensitive (could use equivalent _stricmp) */

result = _stricmp( string1, string2 );

if( result > 0 )

strcpy( tmp, "greater than" );

else if( result < 0 )

strcpy( tmp, "less than" );

else

strcpy( tmp, "equal to" );

printf( "\t_stricmp: String 1 is %s string 2\n", tmp );

}

Output

Compare strings:

The quick brown dog jumps over the lazy fox

The QUICK brown dog jumps over the lazy fox

strcmp: String 1 is greater than string 2

_stricmp: String 1 is equal to string 2