strcmp(X;Y;B)

Returns an integer value that indicates the results of comparing two strings.

Syntax

strcmp(X;Y;B)
bstrcmp(X;Y;B)

Input

Argument Type Description
X text The string on which to apply the function

A scalar value or the name of a column
Y text The string to compare to X

A scalar value or the name of a column
B integer Specifies whether the comparison is case sensitive or not

If B=0, the comparison is not case sensitive.

If B is non-zero (including N/A), then it is treated as if it were 1 (i.e., the comparison is case sensitive).

Return Value

If X<Y, this function returns an integer value of -1.

If X>Y, it returns an integer value of 1.

If X=Y, it returns an integer value of 0.

Note: The comparison is case insensitive if and only if B=0.

Unicode code-point order (which does not correspond to the lexicographic order used in any particular language) is used for comparison. Generic (non-language-specific) Unicode case folding is used for case-insensitive comparisons.

If both X and Y are N/A, then the result is 0. If X is N/A, then the result is 1. If Y is N/A, then the result is -1.

Sample Usage

value1 value2 case sensitive strcmp(value;list;case sensitive)
'banana' 'Banana' 0 0
'banana' 'Banana' 1 1
'Banana' 'banana' 1 -1
'banana' 'pear' 1 -1
'pear' 'banana' 0 1

Example

The following example shows the results of strcmp(X;Y;B) on the content of the data in the inline table provided by the <table> operation. The computed column results_0 displays the results of comparing the strings in the columns string1 and string2 where the comparison is not case sensitive (i.e., B=0). The computed column results_1 displays the results of comparing the strings in the two columns where the comparison is case sensitive (i.e., B=1).

<table cols="string1,string2">
  apple,pear;
  Apple,apple
</table>
<willbe name="results_0" value="strcmp(string1;string2;0)"/>
<willbe name="results_1" value="strcmp(string1;string2;1)"/>

Additional Information

  • strcmp is Unicode (UTF-8) compliant and will work with Unicode or plain ASCII text fields.
  • If passed a string argument that is not legal Unicode, it will by default signal an error (configurable as a user preference).
  • A corresponding function bstrcmp can be used with non-Unicode strings (e.g., binary or legacy encodings).