String comparison functions in PHP - Mini Project: Build & Apply

String comparison functions

📖 Scenario: You are building a simple PHP program to compare two strings in different ways. This is useful when you want to check if two words are the same, or if one word comes before another in alphabetical order.

🎯 Goal: Create a PHP script that compares two strings using different string comparison functions and shows the results.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create two string variables with exact values

Create a variable to hold the length limit for comparison

Use strcmp to compare the two strings

Use strcasecmp to compare the two strings ignoring case

Use strncmp to compare the first N characters of the two strings

Print the results of all comparisons

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

String comparison is important in many programs like sorting names, checking passwords, or filtering text.

💼 Career

Understanding string comparison functions helps in data validation, search features, and user input handling in web development.

1

DATA SETUP: Create two string variables

Create two string variables called string1 and string2 with these exact values: "HelloWorld" and "helloworld" respectively.

PHP

// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the = sign to assign the exact text to each variable.

2

CONFIGURATION: Create a length variable for partial comparison

Create an integer variable called length and set it to 5.

PHP

<?php
$string1 = "HelloWorld";
$string2 = "helloworld";
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Just create a variable with the number 5 to use later.

3

CORE LOGIC: Compare the strings using string comparison functions

Use strcmp to compare $string1 and $string2 and store the result in $result1. Then use strcasecmp to compare $string1 and $string2 ignoring case and store in $result2. Finally, use strncmp to compare the first $length characters of $string1 and $string2 and store in $result3.

PHP

<?php
$string1 = "HelloWorld";
$string2 = "helloworld";
$length = 5;
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the exact function names and variable names as shown.

4

OUTPUT: Print the comparison results

Print the values of $result1, $result2, and $result3 each on a new line using echo.

PHP

<?php
$string1 = "HelloWorld";
$string2 = "helloworld";
$length = 5;

$result1 = strcmp($string1, $string2);
$result2 = strcasecmp($string1, $string2);
$result3 = strncmp($string1, $string2, $length);
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use echo and add a newline character \n after each result.