strcoll

Compares two null-terminated byte strings according to the current locale as defined by the LC_COLLATE category.

Parameters

Return value

• Negative value if lhs is less than (precedes) rhs .
• ​ 0 ​ if lhs is equal to rhs .
• Positive value if lhs is greater than (follows) rhs .

Notes

Collation order is the dictionary order: the position of the letter in the national alphabet (its equivalence class ) has higher priority than its case or variant. Within an equivalence class, lowercase characters collate before their uppercase equivalents and locale-specific order may apply to the characters with diacritics. In some locales, groups of characters compare as single collation units . For example, "ch" in Czech follows "h" and precedes "i" , and "dzs" in Hungarian follows "dz" and precedes "g" .

Example

#include <locale.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    setlocale(LC_COLLATE, "cs_CZ.utf8");
    // Alternatively, ISO-8859-2 (a.k.a. Latin-2)
    // may also work on some OS:
    // setlocale(LC_COLLATE, "cs_CZ.iso88592");
 
    const char* s1 = "hrnec";
    const char* s2 = "chrt";
 
    printf("In the Czech locale: ");
    if (strcoll(s1, s2) < 0)
        printf("%s before %s\n", s1, s2);
    else
        printf("%s before %s\n", s2, s1);
 
    printf("In lexicographical comparison: ");
    if (strcmp(s1, s2) < 0)
        printf("%s before %s\n", s1, s2);
    else
        printf("%s before %s\n", s2, s1);
}

In the Czech locale: hrnec before chrt
In lexicographical comparison: chrt before hrnec

References

See also