Thread: How are strings compared exactly?!??!

I know the syntax but I want to know the background work.

If I have 2 strings. Here's what I think.

1. the longer string is always the greater (>) one.
2. if 2 are of same size then check element by element, first string with an element smaller than the other, is the smaller string.

is this true?
are there more to this?

It depends on what you are using to compare. There are many different comparison functions, and people often write their own to make it do what the want. You can just write a simple program to try it with the comparison function you are using.

ok then how do you compare 'c' strings be default?

Again, there are lots of functions. Most people use strcmp I guess. I couldn't find the answer in the documentation for strcmp, so I wrote a little program to try it:

Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <iomanip>
#include <string>
#include <set>

void OutputCompare(const std::string& s1, const std::string& s2);

int main()
{
    std::string string1 = "Ha";
    std::string string2 = "Hallo";
    std::string string3 = "He";
    std::string string4 = "Hello";
    std::string string5 = "Hi";
    std::string string6 = "Hillo";

    std::cout << "strcmp sort:" << std::endl;
    OutputCompare(string1, string2);
    OutputCompare(string1, string3);
    OutputCompare(string1, string4);
    OutputCompare(string1, string5);
    OutputCompare(string1, string6);
    OutputCompare(string2, string3);
    OutputCompare(string2, string4);
    OutputCompare(string2, string5);
    OutputCompare(string2, string6);
    OutputCompare(string3, string4);
    OutputCompare(string3, string5);
    OutputCompare(string3, string6);
    OutputCompare(string4, string5);
    OutputCompare(string4, string6);
    OutputCompare(string5, string6);

    std::set<std::string> wordSet;
    wordSet.insert(string1);
    wordSet.insert(string2);
    wordSet.insert(string3);
    wordSet.insert(string4);
    wordSet.insert(string5);
    wordSet.insert(string6);

    std::cout << "\nSet sort:" << std::endl;
    std::set<std::string>::const_iterator iterString = wordSet.begin();
    std::set<std::string>::const_iterator iterEnd = wordSet.end();
    for (; iterString != iterEnd; ++iterString)
        std::cout << *iterString << std::endl;
}

void OutputCompare(const std::string& s1, const std::string& s2)
{
    if (strcmp(s1.c_str(), s2.c_str()) < 0)
        std::cout << std::setw(5) << s1 << " is less than " << s2 << std::endl;
    else if (strcmp(s1.c_str(), s2.c_str()) > 0)
        std::cout << std::setw(5) << s2 << " is less than " << s1 << std::endl;
    else
        std::cout << std::setw(5) << s1 << " is equivalent to " << s2 << std::endl;
}

Note the order of the strings in the code is the order they are sorted with strcmp, and even though I used std::string, I still compared c-style strings by using the .c_str() function.

So the longer string is NOT always the greater one with this compare function. It just goes one letter at a time.