.\" Copyright (c) 2023–2024 DTB <trinity@trinity.moe>
.\" Copyright (c) 2023–2024 Emma Tebibyte <emma@tebibyte.media>
.\"
.\" This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. To see a copy of this license,
.\" visit <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/>.

.TH STRCMP 1

.SH NAME

strcmp \(en compare strings

.SH SYNOPSIS

strcmp
.RM [ string ]
.RB [ strings... ]

.SH DESCRIPTION

Strcmp checks whether the given strings are the same.
Strcmp exits successfully if the strings are identical. Otherwise, strcmp exits
with the value 1 if an earlier string has a greater byte value than a later
string (e.g.
.R strcmp b a
)
and 255 if an earlier string has a lesser byte value (e.g.
.R strcmp a b
).

.SH DIAGNOSTICS

Strcmp will print an error message and exit unsuccessfully with a status
described in sysexits(3) if used incorrectly (given less than two operands).

.SH UNICODE

Strcmp will exit unsuccessfully if the given strings are not identical;
Unicode strings may need to be normalized if the intent is to check visual
similarity and not byte similarity.

.SH RATIONALE

The traditional tool for string comparisons in POSIX and other Unix shells has
been test(1). This tool also handles integer comparisons and file scrutiny.
These parts of its functionality have been broken out into multiple utilities.

Strcmp’s functionality may be performed on a POSIX-compliant system with
test(1p).

.SH AUTHOR

Written by DTB <trinity@trinity.moe>.

.SH COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2023 DTB. License AGPLv3+: GNU AGPL version 3 or later
<https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

.SH SEE ALSO

strcmp(3), intcmp(1), scrut(1), test(1p)