Different ways to compare Strings in Golang

In Go, strings are immutable sequences of bytes encoded in UTF-8. You can compare them using comparison operators or the strings.Compare function. In this article,we will learn different ways to compare Strings in Golang.

Example

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "strings"
)

func main() {
    s1 := "Hello"
    s2 := "Geeks"
    s3 := "Hello"

    fmt.Println("String 1:", s1)
    fmt.Println("String 2:", s2)
    fmt.Println("String 3:", s3)
}

Using Comparison Operators

In Go, strings can be compared with operators like ==, !=, <, >, <=, and >=. This allows checking equality or lexicographical ordering.

Syntax

// Equality and inequality
str1 == str2  // true if str1 equals str2
str1 != str2  // true if str1 does not equal str2

// Lexicographical comparison
str1 < str2   // true if str1 comes before str2
str1 > str2   // true if str1 comes after str2
str1 <= str2  // true if str1 comes before or is equal to str2
str1 >= str2  // true if str1 comes after or is equal to str2

Example

package main
import "fmt"
  
func main() {
    s1 := "Hello"
    s2 := "Geeks"
    s3 := "Hello"

    // Equality and inequality
    fmt.Println("s1 == s2:", s1 == s2) // false
    fmt.Println("s1 == s3:", s1 == s3) // true
    fmt.Println("s1 != s2:", s1 != s2) // true

    // Lexicographical comparison
    fmt.Println("s1 < s2:", s1 < s2)   // true
    fmt.Println("s1 > s2:", s1 > s2)   // false
    fmt.Println("s1 <= s3:", s1 <= s3) // true
    fmt.Println("s1 >= s3:", s1 >= s3) // true
}

Output

s1 == s2: false
s1 == s3: true
s1 != s2: true
s1 < s2: false
s1 > s2: true
s1 <= s3: true
s1 >= s3: true

Using strings.Compare Function

The strings.Compare function compares two strings lexicographically and returns:

• 0 if s1 is equal to s2
• 1 if s1 is lexicographically greater than s2
• -1 if s1 is lexicographically less than s2

Syntax

result := strings.Compare(s1, s2)

package main
import (
    "fmt"
    "strings"
)
func main() {
    s1 := "Hello"
    s2 := "Geeks"
    s3 := "Hello"

    fmt.Println("strings.Compare(s1, s2):", strings.Compare(s1, s2)) // -1
    fmt.Println("strings.Compare(s1, s3):", strings.Compare(s1, s3)) // 0
    fmt.Println("strings.Compare(s2, s1):", strings.Compare(s2, s1)) // 1
}

Output

strings.Compare(s1, s2): 1
strings.Compare(s1, s2): 0
strings.Compare(s1, s2): -1