_stricoll, _wcsicoll, _mbsicoll, _stricoll_l, _wcsicoll_l, _mbsicoll_l

Article
02/01/2013

Compare strings using locale-specific information.

int _stricoll(
   const char *string1,
   const char *string2 
);
int _wcsicoll(
   const wchar_t *string1,
   const wchar_t *string2 
);
int _mbsicoll(
   const unsigned char *string1,
   const unsigned char *string2 
);
int _stricoll_l(
   const char *string1,
   const char *string2,
   _locale_t locale
);
int _wcsicoll_l(
   const wchar_t *string1,
   const wchar_t *string2,
   _locale_t locale
);
int _mbsicoll_l(
   const unsigned char *string1,
   const unsigned char *string2,
   _locale_t locale
);

Parameters

string1, string2
Null-terminated strings to compare.
locale
The locale to use.

Return Value

Each of these functions returns a value indicating the relationship of string1 to string2*,* as follows.

Return value	Relationship of string1 to string2
< 0	string1 less than string2
0	string1 identical to string2
> 0	string1 greater than string2
_NLSCMPERROR	An error occurred.

Each of these functions returns _NLSCMPERROR. To use _NLSCMPERROR, include either STRING.H or MBSTRING.H. _wcsicoll can fail if either string1 or string2 contains wide-character codes outside the domain of the collating sequence. When an error occurs, _wcsicoll may set errno to EINVAL. To check for an error on a call to _wcsicoll, set errno to 0 and then check errno after calling _wcsicoll.

Remarks

Each of these functions performs a case-insensitive comparison of string1 and string2 according to the code page currently in use. These functions should be used only when there is a difference between the character set order and the lexicographic character order in the current code page and this difference is of interest for the string comparison.

_stricmp differs from _stricoll in that the _stricmp comparison is affected by LC_CTYPE, whereas the _stricoll comparison is according to the LC_CTYPE and LC_COLLATE categories of the locale. For more information on the LC_COLLATE category, see setlocale and Locale Categories. The versions of these functions without the _l suffix use the current locale; the versions with the _l suffix are identical except that they use the locale passed in instead. For more information, see Locale.

All of these functions validate their parameters. If either string1 or string2 are NULL pointers, the invalid parameter handler is invoked, as described in Parameter Validation. If execution is allowed to continue, these functions return _NLSCMPERROR and set errno to EINVAL.

Generic-Text Routine Mappings

TCHAR.H routine	_UNICODE & _MBCS not defined	_MBCS defined	_UNICODE defined
_tcsicoll	_stricoll	_mbsicoll	_wcsicoll

Requirements

Routine	Required header
_stricoll, _stricoll_l	<string.h>
_wcsicoll, _wcsicoll_l	<wchar.h>, <string.h>
_mbsicoll, _mbsicoll_l	<mbstring.h>

For additional compatibility information, see Compatibility in the Introduction.

.NET Framework Equivalent

System::String::Compare

_stricoll, _wcsicoll, _mbsicoll, _stricoll_l, _wcsicoll_l, _mbsicoll_l

Parameters

Return Value

Remarks

Requirements

.NET Framework Equivalent

See Also

Reference

Additional resources