_strnicmp, _wcsnicmp, _mbsnicmp, _strnicmp_l, _wcsnicmp_l, _mbsnicmp_l

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06/05/2017

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The latest version of this topic can be found at _strnicmp, _wcsnicmp, _mbsnicmp, _strnicmp_l, _wcsnicmp_l, _mbsnicmp_l.

Compares the specified number of 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.

Syntax

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

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