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Perform culture-insensitive string comparisons

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By default, the String.Compare method performs culture-sensitive and case-sensitive comparisons. This method also includes several overloads that provide a culture parameter that lets you specify the culture to use, and a comparisonType parameter that lets you specify the comparison rules to use. Calling these methods instead of the default overload removes any ambiguity about the rules used in a particular method call, and makes it clear whether a particular comparison is culture-sensitive or culture-insensitive.

Note

Both overloads of the String.CompareTo method perform culture-sensitive and case-sensitive comparisons; you cannot use this method to perform culture-insensitive comparisons. For code clarity, we recommend that you use the String.Compare method instead.

For culture-sensitive operations, specify the StringComparison.CurrentCulture or StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase enumeration value as the comparisonType parameter. If you want to perform a culture-sensitive comparison using a designated culture other than the current culture, specify the CultureInfo object that represents that culture as the culture parameter.

The culture-insensitive string comparisons supported by the String.Compare method are either linguistic (based on the sorting conventions of the invariant culture) or non-linguistic (based on the ordinal value of the characters in the string). Most culture-insensitive string comparisons are non-linguistic. For these comparisons, specify the StringComparison.Ordinal or StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase enumeration value as the comparisonType parameter. For example, if a security decision (such as a user name or password comparison) is based on the result of a string comparison, the operation should be culture-insensitive and non-linguistic to ensure that the result is not affected by the conventions of a particular culture or language.

Use culture-insensitive linguistic string comparison if you want to handle linguistically relevant strings from multiple cultures in a consistent way. For example, if your application displays words that use multiple character sets in a list box, you might want to display words in the same order regardless of the current culture. For culture-insensitive linguistic comparisons, .NET defines an invariant culture that is based on the linguistic conventions of English. To perform a culture-insensitive linguistic comparison, specify StringComparison.InvariantCulture or StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase as the comparisonType parameter.

The following example performs two culture-insensitive, non-linguistic string comparisons. The first is case-sensitive, but the second is not.

using System;

public class CompareSample
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        string string1 = "file";
        string string2 = "FILE";
        int compareResult = 0;

        compareResult = String.Compare(string1, string2,
                                       StringComparison.Ordinal);
        Console.WriteLine("{0} comparison of '{1}' and '{2}': {3}",
                          StringComparison.Ordinal, string1, string2,
                          compareResult);

        compareResult = String.Compare(string1, string2,
                                       StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase);
        Console.WriteLine("{0} comparison of '{1}' and '{2}': {3}",
                          StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase, string1, string2,
                          compareResult);
    }
}
// The example displays the following output:
//    Ordinal comparison of 'file' and 'FILE': 32
//    OrdinalIgnoreCase comparison of 'file' and 'FILE': 0

Public Class CompareSample
    Public Shared Sub Main()
        Dim string1 As String = "file"
        Dim string2 As String = "FILE"
        Dim compareResult As Integer

        compareResult = String.Compare(string1, string2, _
                                       StringComparison.Ordinal)
        Console.WriteLine("{0} comparison of '{1}' and '{2}': {3}",
                          StringComparison.Ordinal, string1, string2,
                          compareResult)

        compareResult = String.Compare(string1, string2,
                                       StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase)
        Console.WriteLine("{0} comparison of '{1}' and '{2}': {3}",
                          StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase, string1, string2,
                          compareResult)
    End Sub
End Class
' The example displays the following output:
'    Ordinal comparison of 'file' and 'FILE': 32
'    OrdinalIgnoreCase comparison of 'file' and 'FILE': 0

You can download the Sorting Weight Tables, a set of text files that contain information on the character weights used in sorting and comparison operations for Windows operating systems, and the Default Unicode Collation Element Table, the sort weight table for Linux and macOS.

See also