int _mbsnbcoll( const unsigned char *string1, const unsigned char string2, size_t count );
int _mbsnbicoll( const unsigned char *string1, const unsigned char string2, size_t count );
| Routine | Required Header | Compatibility |
| _mbsnbcoll | <mbstring.h> | Win 95, Win NT |
| _mbsnbicoll | <mbstring.h> | Win 95, Win NT |
For additional compatibility information, see Compatibility in the Introduction.
Libraries
| LIBC.LIB | Single thread static library, retail version |
| LIBCMT.LIB | Multithread static library, retail version |
| MSVCRT.LIB | Import library for MSVCRT.DLL, retail version |
Return Value
The return value indicates the relation of the substrings of string1 and string2.
| Return Value | Description |
| < 0 | string1 substring less than string2 substring |
| 0 | string1 substring identical to string2 substring |
| > 0 | string1 substring greater than string2 substring |
Each of these functions returns _NLSCMPERROR on an error. To use _NLSCMPERROR, include either STRING.H or MBSTRING.H.
Parameters
string1, string2
Strings to compare
count
Number of bytes to compare
Remarks
Each of these functions collates, at most, the first count bytes in string1 and string2 and returns a value indicating the relationship between the resulting substrings of string1 and string2. If the final byte in the substring of string1 or string2 is a lead byte, it is not included in the comparison; these functions compare only complete characters in the substrings. _mbsnbicoll is a case-insensitive version of _mbsnbcoll. Like _mbsnbcmp and _mbsnbicmp, _mbsnbcoll and _mbsnbicoll collate the two multibyte-character strings according to the lexicographic order specified by the multibyte code page currently in use.
For some code pages and corresponding character sets, the order of characters in the character set may differ from the lexicographic character order. In the “C” locale, this is not the case: the order of characters in the ASCII character set is the same as the lexicographic order of the characters. However, in certain European code pages, for example, the character 'a' (value 0x61) precedes the character 'ä' (value 0xE4) in the character set, but the character 'ä' precedes the character 'a' lexicographically. To perform a lexicographic comparison of strings by bytes in such an instance, use _mbsnbcoll rather than _mbsnbcmp; to check only for string equality, use _mbsnbcmp.
Because the coll functions collate strings lexicographically for comparison, whereas the cmp functions simply test for string equality, the coll functions are much slower than the corresponding cmp versions. Therefore, the coll functions should be used only when there is a difference between the character set order and the lexicographic character order in the current code page and this difference is of interest for the comparison.
Generic-Text Routine Mappings
| TCHAR.H Routine | _UNICODE & _MBCS Not Defined | _MBCS Defined | _UNICODE Defined |
| _tcsncoll | _strncoll | _mbsnbcoll | _wcsncoll |
| _tcsnicoll | _strnicoll | _mbsnbicoll | _wcsnicoll |
See Also _mbsnbcat, _mbsnbcmp, _mbsnbicmp, strcoll Functions, strncmp, _strnicmp