Description

Compares two strings alphabetically.

If the first string is "before" the second string, a value less than 0 is returned. If the second string is "before" the first string, a value greater than 0 is returned. If the two strings are equal, 0 is returned.

By default, the string comparison is case-sensitive (e.g. `A` is less than `a`). It compares ASCII character values, with capital letters (A-Z) being before lower case letters (a-z). This can be overridden with the -noCase flag.

This command is useful for sorting lists of strings. If you just want to determine if two strings are identical, use the equality operator `==` on the two strings.

Functional area

String

Command syntax

Syntax

strCompare "string1" "string2" [-noCase]

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Comments
`string1`	string	yes	First string to be compared.
`string2`	string	yes	Second string to be compared.

Flags

Name	Flag arguments	Argument type	Exclusive to	Comments
`noCase`	0	—	—	Specifies that the search be case insensitive. The default is case sensitive.

Return value

integer

See Description section above for explanation of the return value.

Examples

// Demonstrate string comparison.
string $str1 = "Bob";
string $str2 = "Stan";
string $str3 = "bob";
int $val;
 
// Compare the first two strings.
$val = `strCompare $str1 $str2`;
print $val; 
// Should be less than 0
 
// Compare the second and third strings.
$val = `strCompare $str2 $str3`;
print $val; 
// Should be less than 0
 
// Compare the first and the third.
$val = `strCompare $str1 $str3`;print $val; 
// Should be less than 0
 
// Do a case insensitive search of the first and third
$val = `strCompare $str1 $str3 -noCase`;
print $val; 
// Should be 0

Shogun 1.10 Documentation

strCompare