.\" Copyright (C) 2001 Andries Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>
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.TH STRVERSCMP 3  2001-12-19 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"
.SH NAME
strverscmp \- compare two version strings
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #define _GNU_SOURCE
.br
.B #include <string.h>
.sp
.BI "int strverscmp(const char *" s1 ", const char *" s2 );
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
Often one has files
.IR jan1 ", " jan2 ", ..., " jan9 ", " jan10 ", ..."
and it feels wrong when
.BR ls (1)
orders them
.IR jan1 ", " jan10 ", ..., " jan2 ", ..., " jan9 .
.\" classical solution: "rename jan jan0 jan?"
In order to rectify this, GNU introduced the
.I \-v
option to
.BR ls (1),
which is implemented using
.BR versionsort (3),
which again uses
.BR strverscmp ().

Thus, the task of
.BR strverscmp ()
is to compare two strings and find the "right" order, while
.BR strcmp (3)
only finds the lexicographic order.
This function does not use
the locale category
.BR LC_COLLATE ,
so is meant mostly for situations
where the strings are expected to be in ASCII.

What this function does is the following.
If both strings are equal, return 0.
Otherwise find the position
between two bytes with the property that before it both strings are equal,
while directly after it there is a difference.
Find the largest consecutive digit strings containing (or starting at,
or ending at) this position.
If one or both of these is empty,
then return what
.BR strcmp (3)
would have returned (numerical ordering of byte values).
Otherwise, compare both digit strings numerically, where digit strings with
one or more leading zeros are interpreted as if they have a decimal point
in front (so that in particular digit strings with more leading zeros
come before digit strings with fewer leading zeros).
Thus, the ordering is
.IR 000 ", " 00 ", " 01 ", " 010 ", " 09 ", " 0 ", " 1 ", " 9 ", " 10 .
.SH "RETURN VALUE"
The
.BR strverscmp ()
function returns an integer
less than, equal to, or greater than zero if \fIs1\fP
is found, respectively, to be earlier than, equal to,
or later than \fIs2\fP.
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
This function is a GNU extension.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR rename (1),
.BR strcasecmp (3),
.BR strcmp (3),
.BR strcoll (3),
.BR feature_test_macros (7)
.SH COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.22 of the Linux
.I man-pages
project.
A description of the project,
and information about reporting bugs,
can be found at
http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
