wcscoll

Compares two null-terminated wide strings according to the collation order defined by the LC_COLLATE category of the currently installed locale.

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 <stdio.h>
#include <wchar.h>
#include <locale.h>
 
void try_compare(const wchar_t* p1, const wchar_t* p2)
{
    if(wcscoll(p1, p2) < 0)
        printf("%ls before %ls\n", p1, p2);
    else
        printf("%ls before %ls\n", p2, p1);
}
 
int main(void)
{
    setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_US.utf8");
    printf("In the American locale: ");
    try_compare(L"hrnec", L"chrt");
 
    setlocale(LC_COLLATE, "cs_CZ.utf8");
    printf("In the Czech locale: ");
    try_compare(L"hrnec", L"chrt");
 
    setlocale(LC_COLLATE, "en_US.utf8");
    printf("In the American locale: ");
    try_compare(L"år", L"ängel");
 
    setlocale(LC_COLLATE, "sv_SE.utf8");
    printf("In the Swedish locale: ");
    try_compare(L"år", L"ängel");
}

In the American locale: chrt before hrnec
In the Czech locale: hrnec before chrt
In the American locale: ängel before år
In the Swedish locale: år before ängel

References