Thread: Why strcmp equals zero

  1. #1
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    Why strcmp equals zero

    I followed Hammer's tutorial on Comparing Strings, but one thing I don't understand.

    Code:
    if(strcmp(foo, bar) == 0)
      puts("Strings equal");
    else
     puts("Strings not equal");
    Why compare these strings to zero. I know that in boolean 0 is false and 1 is true. I have to say that these tutorials are very good for beginners.

    Thanks.

  2. #2
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    string comparison starts with the first character and goes on till a character differs or one of the strings gets completed
    coonsider strcmp(s1,s2)
    if strcmp(s1,s2) == 0 => s1==s2
    if strcmp(s1,s2) <0 => s1<s2
    ifstrcmp(s1,s2) > 0 => s1>s2

  3. #3
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    oh and the value strcmp returns is the diff. betwn. the value of the corres. characters of the strings. //pls. verify this

  4. #4
    Software Developer jverkoey's Avatar
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    Somehow I got the code for this (and many other c functions)

    -edit-
    Ok, they're all the source code for C functions....in C. Some of the functions are written in assembly, but I don't feel like finding the one's I've seen. It's just nice to see how they did the actual functions written out.

    anyways
    Code:
         
         /***
         *strcmp - compare two strings, returning less than, equal to, or greater than
         *
         *Purpose:
         *	   STRCMP compares two strings and returns an integer
         *	   to indicate whether the first is less than the second, the two are
         *	   equal, or whether the first is greater than the second.
         *
         *	   Comparison is done byte by byte on an UNSIGNED basis, which is to
         *	   say that Null (0) is less than any other character (1-255).
         *
         *Entry:
         *	   const char * src - string for left-hand side of comparison
         *	   const char * dst - string for right-hand side of comparison
         *
         *Exit:
         *	   returns -1 if src <  dst
         *	   returns  0 if src == dst
         *	   returns +1 if src >  dst
         *
         *Exceptions:
         *
         *******************************************************************************/
         
         int __cdecl strcmp (
         		const char * src,
         		const char * dst
         		)
         {
         		int ret = 0 ;
         
     		while( ! (ret = *(unsigned char *)src - *(unsigned char *)dst) && *dst)
         				++src, ++dst;
         
         		if ( ret < 0 )
         				ret = -1 ;
         		else if ( ret > 0 )
         				ret = 1 ;
         
         		return( ret );
         }
    Last edited by jverkoey; 07-21-2004 at 08:42 PM.

  5. #5
    & the hat of GPL slaying Thantos's Avatar
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    To reiterate what alvarorahul said:

    strcmp() compares the strings one character at a time. If the characters match it goes on to the next character. Once it finds a difference it subtracts the character from string2 from the character from string1.

    So given:
    Code:
    char s1[] = "My name is Bob";
    char s2[] = "My name is Billy";
    It will compare "My name is B" from both strings and then read o from s1 and i from s2 and then returns the value of o-i. If the value returned is < 0 then s1 is less than s2, if the value returned is > 0 then s1 is greater then s2. So by default (only range left) 0 means they are the same.

  6. #6
    Software Developer jverkoey's Avatar
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    strcmp is really helpful in sorting algorithms.

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