How to compare two strings in PHP?
1 answer
@darion
In PHP, you can compare two strings using various string comparison functions like strcmp, strcasecmp, substr_compare, strnatcmp, etc. Here are some examples:
- Using strcmp function:
The strcmp function compares two strings byte by byte and returns 0 if they are equal, -1 if the first string is less than the second one, and 1 if the first string is greater than the second one.
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$str1 = "hello"; $str2 = "world"; $result = strcmp($str1, $str2); if ($result == 0) { echo "The two strings are equal"; } else if ($result < 0) { echo "The first string is less than the second one"; } else { echo "The first string is greater than the second one"; } |
- Using strcasecmp function:
The strcasecmp function compares two strings case-insensitively and returns 0 if they are equal, -1 if the first string is less than the second one, and 1 if the first string is greater than the second one.
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$str1 = "hello"; $str2 = "HELLO"; $result = strcasecmp($str1, $str2); if ($result == 0) { echo "The two strings are equal"; } else if ($result < 0) { echo "The first string is less than the second one"; } else { echo "The first string is greater than the second one"; } |
- Using substr_compare function:
The substr_compare function compares two substrings within a string and returns 0 if they are equal, -1 if the first substring is less than the second one, and 1 if the first substring is greater than the second one.
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$str1 = "hello world"; $str2 = "world"; $result = substr_compare($str1, $str2, 6); if ($result == 0) { echo "The two substrings are equal"; } else if ($result < 0) { echo "The first substring is less than the second one"; } else { echo "The first substring is greater than the second one"; } |
- Using strnatcmp function:
The strnatcmp function compares two strings using a natural order algorithm and returns 0 if they are equal, -1 if the first string is less than the second one, and 1 if the first string is greater than the second one.
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$str1 = "file10.txt"; $str2 = "file2.txt"; $result = strnatcmp($str1, $str2); if ($result == 0) { echo "The two strings are equal"; } else if ($result < 0) { echo "The first string is less than the second one"; } else { echo "The first string is greater than the second one"; } |