String.Compare() != String.Equals() [Josh Free]

re: String.Compare() != String.Equals() [Josh Free]

Kent Boogaart — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 06:15:20 GMT

Hello. Surely the confusion is over the default behavior of Equals vs Compare. Both methods provide overloads that take a StringComparison, so both can do ordinal or cultural comparisons.

The real difference is that Compare will tell you whether one string is less than or greater than another, whereas Equals will only tell you whether they are equal.

Oh, and the default behavior of == is the same as Equals, right?

Thanks

Something .NET does less intuitively than they ought

Sorting It All Out — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 09:59:44 GMT

If you are someone who reads the BCL Team blog, you may have seen Josh Free's String.Compare() != String.Equals()

re: String.Compare() != String.Equals() [Josh Free]

Josh Free — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:03:41 GMT

Hi Kent,

Yes, == is the same as the default Equals overload (Ordinal).

re: String.Compare() != String.Equals() [Josh Free]

Dave Quick — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:26:15 GMT

This is a nice, clear explanation. You should have the user education folks copy at least a little of this into the method summary on the VS documentation page for the String.Compare Method topic. It currently reads "Compares two specified String objects.", which is perfectly correct, but not terribly helpful. Sort of like that old MSFT joke about the guy in the helicopter. That topic could also use a See Also link to the "Performing Culture-Insensitive String Comparisons" and "String.Equals Method" topics.

re: String.Compare() != String.Equals() [Josh Free]

James Curran — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:31:17 GMT

Of course, to confuse matters even more, String.Equals returns a boolean, while String.Compare returns an int.

And, if you cast the return from String.Compare to a boolean, it will be the exact OPPOSITE of calling String.Equals with the same paramters.

.NET Tips & Tricks

Michael's Coding Den — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:08:13 GMT

Last update: June 13 , 2007 Document version 0.6 Preface If you have something to add, or want to take

.NET Tips & Tricks: Common

Michael's Coding Den — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:56:49 GMT

Common INFO: · const is "baked" into the assembly. If you have to change the const value in

.NET Tips & Tricks: Common

Michael's Coding Den — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 23:14:31 GMT

This section describes the common .NET tips which don't relates to the specific category. INFO:

re: String.Compare() != String.Equals() [Josh Free]

Chris J. Breisch — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 17:35:29 GMT

Thanks. But what about ==? Does that call .Equals()? .Compare()? Something else?

re: String.Compare() != String.Equals() [Josh Free]

Inbar Gazit — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:23:22 GMT

== is just like String.Equals as you can see in here: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.string.op_equality.aspx

String.Equals Performance Comparison

Noah Coad — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:54:30 GMT

I recently had an app that I used the VSTS Profiler on to find that a significant portion of time was

String.StartsWith || String.EndsWith != String.Equals, either

Sorting it all Out — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:08:03 GMT

Research Developer Mahmoud's question was quite reasonable on its face: Hi All, I was having a problem,