PHP reference

strcmp

Compares two strings.

Syntax

strcmp(string $string1, string $string2): int

Parameter	Type	Description
$string1	string	The first string.
$string2	string	The second string.

intA negative number if the first string is smaller, a positive one if larger, `0` if they are equal.

The result of a comparison:

<?php
 
echo strcmp('apple', 'banana'), ' ', strcmp('apple', 'apple'), ' ', strcmp('b', 'a');

Output:

-1 0 1

Sorting strings alphabetically:

<?php
 
$names = ['Oleg', 'Anna', 'Ivan'];
 
usort($names, 'strcmp');
 
echo implode(', ', $names);

Output:

Anna, Ivan, Oleg

The comparison is case-sensitive: uppercase letters come before lowercase ones. strcasecmp() compares ignoring case.

Strings — Working with strings in PHP — quotes, concatenation, length, searching, replacing and multibyte functions.