C Language and Libraries Help (clang.hlp) (Table of Contents; Topic list)
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Compare Strings
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─────Run-Time Library───────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
     The strcmp, _stricmp, strncmp, and _strnicmp functions operate on
     null-terminated strings. The <string> arguments to these functions
     are expected to contain a null character (\0) marking the end of
     the string.
 
     The _stricmp function is a case-insensitive version of strcmp, and
     the _strnicmp function is a case-insensitive version of strncmp.
     The _strcmpi function is an obsolete synonym for _stricmp. It is
     supported for compatibility. These three functions actually
     perform a lowercase comparison of their <string> arguments.
 
     The strcmp, _strcmpi, and _stricmp functions compare <string1> and
     <string2> and return a value indicating their relationship, as
     follows:
 
     Value     Meaning
 
     < 0       <string1> is less than <string2>
     = 0       <string1> is identical to <string2>
     > 0       <string1> is greater than <string2>
 
     Note that for _stricmp, _strnicmp, and _strcmpi, two strings
     containing characters located between 'Z' and 'a' in the ASCII
     table ('[', '\', ']', '^', '_', and '`') compare differently
     depending on their case. For example, the two strings, "ABCDE"
     and "ABCD^" compare one way if the comparison is lowercase
     ("abcde" > "abcd^") and the other way if it is uppercase
     ("ABCDE" < "ABCD^").
 
     The strncmp and _strnicmp functions operate on, at most, the first
     <count> characters of null-terminated strings. The strncmp and
     _strnicmp functions compare, at most, the first <count> characters
     of <string1> and <string2> and return a value indicating the
     relationship between the substrings, as listed below:
 
     Value     Meaning
 
     < 0       <substring1> is less than <substring2>
     = 0       <substring1> is identical to <substring2>
     > 0       <substring1> is greater than <substring2>
 
     The _f... forms of these functions are model-independent (large-
     model) forms that use far pointer forms of the string arguments
     and return values. These model-independent functions can be called
     from any memory model. Note that there is not a model-independent
     version of the obsolete _strcmpi function. You should use the
     _fstricmp function in its place.
 
     Return Value
 
     The return values for these functions are described above.
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