Name

strcmp, strncmp — compare two strings

Synopsis

#include <string.h>
int strcmp( const char *  s1,
  const char *  s2);
int strncmp( const char *  s1,
  const char *  s2,
  size_t   n);

DESCRIPTION

The strcmp() function compares the two strings s1 and s2. It returns an integer less than, equal to, or greater than zero if s1 is found, respectively, to be less than, to match, or be greater than s2.

The strncmp() function is similar, except it only compares the first (at most) n characters of s1 and s2.

RETURN VALUE

The strcmp() and strncmp() functions return an integer less than, equal to, or greater than zero if s1 (or the first n bytes thereof) is found, respectively, to be less than, to match, or be greater than s2.

CONFORMING TO

SVr4, 4.3BSD, C89, C99.

SEE ALSO

bcmp(3), memcmp(3), strcasecmp(3), strcoll(3), strncasecmp(3), wcscmp(3), wcsncmp(3)

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 2.79 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.


  Copyright 1993 David Metcalfe (davidprism.demon.co.uk)

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References consulted:
    Linux libc source code
    Lewine's _POSIX Programmer's Guide_ (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991)
    386BSD man pages
Modified Sat Jul 24 18:08:52 1993 by Rik Faith (faithcs.unc.edu)
Modified 2001-08-31, aeb