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StrCmpCW function (shlwapi.h)

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Compares strings using C run-time (ASCII) collation rules. The comparison is case-sensitive.

Syntax

int StrCmpCW(
  [out] LPCWSTR pszStr1,
  [out] LPCWSTR pszStr2
);

Parameters

[out] pszStr1

Type: LPCTSTR

A pointer to the first null-terminated string to be compared.

[out] pszStr2

Type: LPCTSTR

A pointer to the second null-terminated string to be compared.

Return value

Type: int

Returns zero if the strings are identical. Returns a positive value if the string pointed to by lpStr1 is alphabetically greater than that pointed to by lpStr2. Returns a negative value if the string pointed to by lpStr1 is alphabetically less than that pointed to by lpStr2.

Remarks

It is strongly recommended that you use the CompareString function in place of this function. StrCmpC was designed for comparing canonical strings. These strings are not localized and consist only of characters below ASCII value 128. Therefore, it will not function correctly with a double-byte character set (DBCS) or other multiple-character data.

This function locates the first unequal characters and returns a positive number if the character from the first string is greater than the character from the second, a negative number if it is less, or zero if they are equal. For example, if lpStr1="abczb" and lpStr2="abcdefg", StrCmpC determines that the first unequal character is at position four ("z" in lpStr1 and "d" in lpStr2) and returns a positive value since the ASCII code for "z" is greater than the ASCII code for "d".

For those versions of Windows that do not include StrCmpC in Shlwapi.h, this function's individual ANSI or Unicode version must be called directly from Shlwapi.dll. StrCmpCA is ordinal 155 and StrCmpCW is ordinal 156.

Note

The shlwapi.h header defines StrCmpC as an alias that automatically selects the ANSI or Unicode version of this function based on the definition of the UNICODE preprocessor constant. Mixing usage of the encoding-neutral alias with code that is not encoding-neutral can lead to mismatches that result in compilation or runtime errors. For more information, see Conventions for Function Prototypes.

Requirements

Requirement Value
Minimum supported client Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP [desktop apps only]
Minimum supported server Windows Server 2003 [desktop apps only]
Target Platform Windows
Header shlwapi.h
Library Shlwapi.lib
DLL Shlwapi.dll (version 5.0 or later)

See also

CompareString