String Functions
PHP Manual

strcmp

Binary safe string comparison

Description

int strcmp(string $string1, string $string2)

Note that this comparison is case sensitive. For case-insensitive comparison, see strcasecmp.

Note that this comparison is not locale aware. For locale aware comparison see strcoll or Collator::compare

Parameters

string1

The first string.

string2

The second string.

Return Values

Returns a value less than 0 if string1 is less than string2; a value greater than 0 if string1 is greater than string2, and 0 if they are equal. No particular meaning can be reliably inferred from the value aside from its sign.

Changelog

Version Description
8.2.0 This function is no longer guaranteed to return strlen($string1) - strlen($string2) when string lengths are not equal, but may now return -1 or 1 instead.

Examples

Example #1 strcmp example

<?php
$var1 = "Hello";
$var2 = "hello";
if (strcmp($var1, $var2) !== 0) {
    echo '$var1 is not equal to $var2 in a case sensitive string comparison';
}
?>

See Also

  • Full string comparison
    • strcasecmp
    • Collator::compare
    • strcoll
  • Partial string comparison
    • substr_compare
    • strncmp
    • strstr
  • Similar / other string comparison
    • preg_match
    • levenshtein
    • metaphone
    • similar_text
    • soundex