strcoll

 

C

Language

Standard Library

Type support

Dynamic memory management

Error handling

Program utilities

Date and time utilities

Strings library

Algorithms

Numerics

Input/output support

Localization support

Thread support (C11)

Atomic operations (C11)

 

Strings library

Byte strings

Multibyte strings

Wide strings

 

Null-terminated byte strings

Functions
Character manipulation
isalnum isalpha islower isupper isdigit isxdigit isblank (C99)	iscntrl isgraph isspace isprint ispunct tolower toupper
Conversions to numeric formats
atof atoiatolatoll strtolstrtoll	strtoulstrtoull strtofstrtodstrtold
String manipulation
strcpy
strncpy
strcat
strncat
strxfrm
String examination
strlen strcmp strncmp strcoll strchr strrchr	strspn strcspn strpbrk strstr strtok
Memory manipulation
memchr
memcmp
memset
memcpy
memmove
Miscellaneous
strerror

 

Defined in header <string.h>
int strcoll( const char *lhs, const char *rhs );

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

Parameters

lhs, rhs

-

pointers to the null-terminated byte strings to compare

Return value

Negative value if lhs is less than rhs.

​0​ if lhs is equal to rhs.

Positive value if lhs is greater than 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

Run this code

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <locale.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    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);
}

Output:

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

See also

wcscoll	compares two wide strings in accordance to the current locale (function)
strxfrm	transform a string so that strcmp would produce the same result as strcoll (function)
wcsxfrm	transform a wide string so that wcscmp would produce the same result as wcscoll (function)
strcmp	compares two strings (function)
C++ documentation for strcoll