lstrcmp

The lstrcmp function compares two character strings. The comparison is case sensitive.

int lstrcmp(

LPCTSTR lpString1,	// address of first string
LPCTSTR lpString2	// address of second string
);

Parameters

lpString1

Points to the first null-terminated string to be compared.

lpString2

Points to the second null-terminated string to be compared.

Return Values

If the function succeeds and the string pointed to by lpString1 is less than the string pointed to by lpString2, the return value is negative; if the string pointed to by lpString1 is greater than the string pointed to by lpString2, it is positive. If the strings are equal, the return value is zero.

Remarks

The lstrcmp function compares two strings by checking the first characters against each other, the second characters against each other, and so on until it finds an inequality or reaches the ends of the strings.

The function returns the difference of the values of the first unequal characters it encounters. For example, lstrcmp determines that "abcz" is greater than "abcdefg" and returns the difference of z and d.

The language (locale) selected by the user at setup time, or via the control panel, determines which string is greater (or whether the strings are the same). If no language (locale) is selected, Windows performs the comparison by using default values. In the Windows United States language functions, uppercase characters have lower values than lowercase characters.

With a double-byte character set (DBCS) version of Windows, this function can compare two DBCS strings.

The Win32 lstrcmp function uses a word sort, rather than a string sort. A word sort treats hyphens and apostrophes differently than it treats other symbols that are not alphanumeric, in order to ensure that words such as "coop" and "co-op" stay together within a sorted list. Note that in 16-bit versions of Windows, lstrcmp uses a string sort. For a detailed discussion of word sorts and string sorts, see the Remarks section of the reference page for the CompareString function .

See Also

CompareString, lstrcat, lstrcmpi, lstrcpy, lstrlen

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