Case-insensitive string comparison in C++ [closed]

Answer 1

I'm trying to cobble together a good answer from all the posts, so help me edit this:

Here is a method of doing this, although it does transforming the strings, and is not Unicode friendly, it should be portable which is a plus:

bool caseInsensitiveStringCompare( const std::string& str1, const std::string& str2 ) {
    std::string str1Cpy( str1 );
    std::string str2Cpy( str2 );
    std::transform( str1Cpy.begin(), str1Cpy.end(), str1Cpy.begin(), ::tolower );
    std::transform( str2Cpy.begin(), str2Cpy.end(), str2Cpy.begin(), ::tolower );
    return ( str1Cpy == str2Cpy );
}

From what I have read this is more portable than stricmp() because stricmp() is not in fact part of the std library, but only implemented by most compiler vendors.

To get a truly Unicode friendly implementation it appears you must go outside the std library. One good 3rd party library is the IBM ICU (International Components for Unicode)

Also boost::iequals provides a fairly good utility for doing this sort of comparison.

Answer 2

Just use strcmp() for case sensitive and strcmpi() or stricmp() for case insensitive comparison. Which are both in the header file <string.h>

format:

int strcmp(const char*,const char*);    //for case sensitive
int strcmpi(const char*,const char*);   //for case insensitive

Usage:

string a="apple",b="ApPlE",c="ball";
if(strcmpi(a.c_str(),b.c_str())==0)      //(if it is a match it will return 0)
    cout<<a<<" and "<<b<<" are the same"<<"\n";
if(strcmpi(a.c_str(),b.c_str()<0)
    cout<<a[0]<<" comes before ball "<<b[0]<<", so "<<a<<" comes before "<<b;

Output

apple and ApPlE are the same

a comes before b, so apple comes before ball

Answer 3

A simple way to compare two string in c++ (tested for windows) is using _stricmp

// Case insensitive (could use equivalent _stricmp)  
result = _stricmp( string1, string2 );  

If you are looking to use with std::string, an example:

std::string s1 = string("Hello");
if ( _stricmp(s1.c_str(), "HELLO") == 0)
   std::cout << "The string are equals.";

For more information here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/it-it/library/e0z9k731.aspx

Answer 4

I wrote a case-insensitive version of char_traits for use with std::basic_string in order to generate a std::string that is not case-sensitive when doing comparisons, searches, etc using the built-in std::basic_string member functions.

So in other words, I wanted to do something like this.

std::string a = "Hello, World!";
std::string b = "hello, world!";

assert( a == b );

...which std::string can't handle. Here's the usage of my new char_traits:

std::istring a = "Hello, World!";
std::istring b = "hello, world!";

assert( a == b );

...and here's the implementation:

/*  ---

        Case-Insensitive char_traits for std::string's

        Use:

            To declare a std::string which preserves case but ignores case in comparisons & search,
            use the following syntax:

                std::basic_string<char, char_traits_nocase<char> > noCaseString;

            A typedef is declared below which simplifies this use for chars:

                typedef std::basic_string<char, char_traits_nocase<char> > istring;

    --- */

    template<class C>
    struct char_traits_nocase : public std::char_traits<C>
    {
        static bool eq( const C& c1, const C& c2 )
        { 
            return ::toupper(c1) == ::toupper(c2); 
        }

        static bool lt( const C& c1, const C& c2 )
        { 
            return ::toupper(c1) < ::toupper(c2);
        }

        static int compare( const C* s1, const C* s2, size_t N )
        {
            return _strnicmp(s1, s2, N);
        }

        static const char* find( const C* s, size_t N, const C& a )
        {
            for( size_t i=0 ; i<N ; ++i )
            {
                if( ::toupper(s[i]) == ::toupper(a) ) 
                    return s+i ;
            }
            return 0 ;
        }

        static bool eq_int_type( const int_type& c1, const int_type& c2 )
        { 
            return ::toupper(c1) == ::toupper(c2) ; 
        }       
    };

    template<>
    struct char_traits_nocase<wchar_t> : public std::char_traits<wchar_t>
    {
        static bool eq( const wchar_t& c1, const wchar_t& c2 )
        { 
            return ::towupper(c1) == ::towupper(c2); 
        }

        static bool lt( const wchar_t& c1, const wchar_t& c2 )
        { 
            return ::towupper(c1) < ::towupper(c2);
        }

        static int compare( const wchar_t* s1, const wchar_t* s2, size_t N )
        {
            return _wcsnicmp(s1, s2, N);
        }

        static const wchar_t* find( const wchar_t* s, size_t N, const wchar_t& a )
        {
            for( size_t i=0 ; i<N ; ++i )
            {
                if( ::towupper(s[i]) == ::towupper(a) ) 
                    return s+i ;
            }
            return 0 ;
        }

        static bool eq_int_type( const int_type& c1, const int_type& c2 )
        { 
            return ::towupper(c1) == ::towupper(c2) ; 
        }       
    };

    typedef std::basic_string<char, char_traits_nocase<char> > istring;
    typedef std::basic_string<wchar_t, char_traits_nocase<wchar_t> > iwstring;

Answer 5

If you are on a POSIX system, you can use strcasecmp. This function is not part of standard C, though, nor is it available on Windows. This will perform a case-insensitive comparison on 8-bit chars, so long as the locale is POSIX. If the locale is not POSIX, the results are undefined (so it might do a localized compare, or it might not). A wide-character equivalent is not available.

Failing that, a large number of historic C library implementations have the functions stricmp() and strnicmp(). Visual C++ on Windows renamed all of these by prefixing them with an underscore because they aren’t part of the ANSI standard, so on that system they’re called _stricmp or _strnicmp. Some libraries may also have wide-character or multibyte equivalent functions (typically named e.g. wcsicmp, mbcsicmp and so on).

C and C++ are both largely ignorant of internationalization issues, so there's no good solution to this problem, except to use a third-party library. Check out IBM ICU (International Components for Unicode) if you need a robust library for C/C++. ICU is for both Windows and Unix systems.

Answer 6

Short and nice. No other dependencies, than extended std C lib.

strcasecmp(str1.c_str(), str2.c_str()) == 0

returns true if str1 and str2 are equal. strcasecmp may not exist, there could be analogs stricmp, strcmpi, etc.

Example code:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <string.h> //For strcasecmp(). Also could be found in <mem.h>

using namespace std;

/// Simple wrapper
inline bool str_ignoreCase_cmp(std::string const& s1, std::string const& s2) {
    if(s1.length() != s2.length())
        return false;  // optimization since std::string holds length in variable.
    return strcasecmp(s1.c_str(), s2.c_str()) == 0;
}

/// Function object - comparator
struct StringCaseInsensetiveCompare {
    bool operator()(std::string const& s1, std::string const& s2) {
        if(s1.length() != s2.length())
            return false;  // optimization since std::string holds length in variable.
        return strcasecmp(s1.c_str(), s2.c_str()) == 0;
    }
    bool operator()(const char *s1, const char * s2){ 
        return strcasecmp(s1,s2)==0;
    }
};


/// Convert bool to string
inline char const* bool2str(bool b){ return b?"true":"false"; }

int main()
{
    cout<< bool2str(strcasecmp("asd","AsD")==0) <<endl;
    cout<< bool2str(strcasecmp(string{"aasd"}.c_str(),string{"AasD"}.c_str())==0) <<endl;
    StringCaseInsensetiveCompare cmp;
    cout<< bool2str(cmp("A","a")) <<endl;
    cout<< bool2str(cmp(string{"Aaaa"},string{"aaaA"})) <<endl;
    cout<< bool2str(str_ignoreCase_cmp(string{"Aaaa"},string{"aaaA"})) <<endl;
    return 0;
}

Output:

true
true
true
true
true