_strnicmp, _wcsnicmp, _mbsnicmp, _strnicmp_l, _wcsnicmp_l, _mbsnicmp_l

Article
04/28/2015

Compares characters of two strings without regard to case.

Important

_mbsnicmp and _mbsnicmp_l cannot be used in applications that execute in the Windows Runtime. For more information, see CRT functions not supported with /ZW.

int _strnicmp(
   const char *string1,
   const char *string2,
   size_t count 
);
int _wcsnicmp(
   const wchar_t *string1,
   const wchar_t *string2,
   size_t count 
);
int _mbsnicmp(
   const unsigned char *string1,
   const unsigned char *string2,
   size_t count 
);
int _strnicmp_l(
   const char *string1,
   const char *string2,
   size_t count,
   _locale_t locale
);
int _wcsnicmp_l(
   const wchar_t *string1,
   const wchar_t *string2,
   size_t count,
   _locale_t locale
);
int _mbsnicmp_l(
   const unsigned char *string1,
   const unsigned char *string2,
   size_t count,
   _locale_t locale
);

Parameters

string1, string2
Null-terminated strings to compare.
count
Number of characters to compare.
locale
Locale to use.

Return Value

Indicates the relationship between the substrings, as follows.

Return value	Description
< 0	string1 substring is less than string2 substring.
0	string1 substring is identical to string2 substring.
> 0	string1 substring is greater than string2 substring.

On a parameter validation error, these functions return _NLSCMPERROR, which is defined in <string.h> and <mbstring.h>.

Remarks

The _strnicmp function ordinally compares, at most, the first count characters of string1 and string2. The comparison is performed without regard to case by converting each character to lowercase. _strnicmp is a case-insensitive version of strncmp. The comparison ends if a terminating null character is reached in either string before count characters are compared. If the strings are equal when a terminating null character is reached in either string before count characters are compared, the shorter string is lesser.

The characters from 91 to 96 in the ASCII table ('[', '\', ']', '^', '_', and '`') evaluate as less than any alphabetic character. This ordering is identical to that of stricmp.

_wcsnicmp and _mbsnicmp are wide-character and multibyte-character versions of _strnicmp. The arguments of _wcsnicmp are wide-character strings; those of _mbsnicmp are multibyte-character strings. _mbsnicmp recognizes multibyte-character sequences according to the current multibyte code page and returns _NLSCMPERROR on an error. For more information, see Code Pages. These three functions behave identically otherwise. These functions are affected by the locale setting—the versions that don't have the _l suffix use the current locale for their locale-dependent behavior; the versions that do have the _l suffix instead use the locale that's passed in. For more information, see Locale.

All of these functions validate their parameters. If either string1 or string2 is a null pointer, 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
_tcsncicmp	_strnicmp	_mbsnicmp	_wcsnicmp
_tcsnicmp	_strnicmp	_mbsnbicmp	_wcsnicmp
_tcsncicmp_l	_strnicmp_l	_mbsnicmp_l	_wcsnicmp_l

Requirements

Routine	Required header
_strnicmp, _strnicmp_l	<string.h>
_wcsnicmp, _wcsnicmp_l	<string.h> or <wchar.h>
_mbsnicmp, _mbsnicmp_l	<mbstring.h>

For additional compatibility information, see Compatibility.

Example

See the example for strncmp.

.NET Framework Equivalent

System::String::Compare