strncasecmp()

strncasecmp() — Binary safe case-insensitive string comparison of the first n characters.

Built-in function of PHP 8.5. The manual lists it as available in PHP 4 >= 4.0.2, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8. This page is the reference card: signature, parameters and return value, plus the changelog and the example the manual provides.

What it does

This function is similar to strcasecmp(), with the difference that you can specify the (upper limit of the) number of characters from each string to be used in the comparison.

Signature

strncasecmp(string $string1, string $string2, int $length): int

Parameters

Return value

Returns a value less than 0 if string1 is less than string2; a value greater than 0 if string1 is greater than string2, and 0 if they are equal. No particular meaning can be reliably inferred from the value aside from its sign.

Example

A runnable snippet:

$var1 = 'Hello John'; $var2 = 'hello Doe'; if (strncasecmp($var1, $var2, 5) === 0) { echo 'First 5 characters of $var1 and $var2 are equal in a case-insensitive string comparison'; }

Changelog

See also

strncmp(), preg_match(), substr_compare(), strcasecmp(), stristr(), substr()

All PHP 8.5 built-in functions

Reference card built from the PHP manual page strncasecmp() (PHP documentation, CC BY 3.0). The page is generated from the manual, so the wording of the parameter and return value text follows php.net.