{"id":69543,"date":"2005-06-22T17:48:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-22T17:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2005\/06\/22\/how-can-i-compare-two-string-values-regardless-of-letter-case\/"},"modified":"2005-06-22T17:48:00","modified_gmt":"2005-06-22T17:48:00","slug":"how-can-i-compare-two-string-values-regardless-of-letter-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/how-can-i-compare-two-string-values-regardless-of-letter-case\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can I Compare Two String Values Regardless of Letter Case?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Hey, \n

Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a script that compares two email addresses and tells me whether or not they are the same. Sometimes the email addresses are<\/I> the same, but the case is different: for example, one address might be example@abc.com<\/I> and the other might be example@ABC.com<\/I>. My script always tells me that these are different<\/I> email addresses. How can I fix this?

— PS<\/P>\"Spacer\"\"Hey,\"Script<\/A> \n

Hey, PS. You know, if people knew what the Scripting Guys were really<\/I> like they\u2019d never trust us with scripting questions like this. For example, a week or so ago one of the Scripting Guys was setting up a family vacation. While making reservations he needed to spell his sister\u2019s married name to the ticket agent. \u201cK as in – \u201c he said, and then stopped dead in his tracks. For the life of him, this Scripting Guy couldn\u2019t think of a single word that started with the letter K<\/I>.<\/P>\n

So what does that have to do with your question? Nothing. We just thought it was an interesting anecdote.<\/P>\n

Ok, but what about<\/I> your question? As you know, we often tell people not to worry about uppercase and lowercase when it comes to writing scripts. \u201cFor the most part VBScript is not<\/I> case sensitive,\u201d we tell people. \u201cABC<\/I> is the same as abc<\/I>.\u201d<\/P>\n

And, in our defense, this is generally true of the keywords, functions, statements and other goodies that make up VBScript. For example, this line of code – odd as it might look – will pop up a message box, no problem:<\/P>

mSGboX “This is a message box.”\n<\/PRE>\n
However, just because you can type Msgbox<\/B> any way you want doesn\u2019t mean that the procedures and tests VBScript carries out are also case-insensitive. For example, try running this script, which compares example@abc.com and example@ABC.com:<\/P>
str1 = “example@abc.com”\nstr2 = “example@ABC.com”<\/p>\n
If str1 = str2 Then\n    Wscript.Echo “The strings are equal.”\nElse\n    Wscript.Echo “The strings are not equal.”\nEnd If\n<\/PRE>\n
Run the script, and you\u2019ll get this message:<\/P>
The strings are not equal.\n<\/PRE>\n
Why? Well, by default, when VBScript compares string values it compares the ASCII values of each character in the string. In the wonderful world of ASCII, the uppercase A<\/I> and the lowercase a<\/I> have different values (65 and 97, respectively). Because the ASCII values are different VBScript insists that the two strings are different.<\/P>\n
So how can we work around this issue? We\u2019re going to show you two different solutions.<\/P>\n
For starters, you can use the VBScript function StrComp<\/B> (for string comparison<\/B>); this helps ensure that your script does a text comparison rather than a binary comparison. (A binary comparison sees A<\/I> and a<\/I> as different characters; a text comparison does not.) For example:<\/P>
str1 = “example@abc.com”\nstr2 = “example@ABC.com”<\/p>\n
intCompare = StrComp(str1, str2, vbTextCompare)<\/p>\n
If intCompare = 0 Then\n    Wscript.Echo “The strings are equal.”\nElse\n    Wscript.Echo “The strings are not equal.”\nEnd If\n<\/PRE>\n
In this script we specify our two string values (str1 and str2) and then call the StrComp function. StrComp gets three parameters: the two strings being compared and the VBScript constant vbTextCompare. The results of the string comparison are then stored in a variable we named intCompare. If intCompare equals 0 then the two strings are equal; if intCompare is equal to anything but<\/I> 0, then the two strings are different.<\/P>\n
Give it a try and see what happens. You should get back this message:<\/P>
The strings are equal.\n<\/PRE>\n
Whew. Much better.<\/P>\n
Here\u2019s another way to ensure that strings get compared without worrying about letter case. In this script we use the UCase<\/B> function to convert all the letters in the two strings to uppercase (in other words, both strings will be converted to EXAMPLE@ABC.COM<\/I>). Because there are no lowercase letters to worry about this script will report back that the two strings are the same:<\/P>
str1 = UCase(“example@abc.com”)\nstr2 = UCase(“example@ABC.com”)<\/p>\n
If str1 = str2 Then\n    Wscript.Echo “The strings are equal.”\nElse\n    Wscript.Echo “The strings are not equal.”\nEnd If\n<\/PRE>\n
Remember, you should use one of these techniques only if case doesn\u2019t matter. If case does<\/I> matter (that is, if example@ABC.com should not be considered identical to example@abc.com), then just use a regular old equivalence test:<\/P>
str1 = “example@abc.com”\nstr2 = “example@ABC.com”<\/p>\n
If str1 = str2 Then\n    Wscript.Echo “The strings are equal.”\nElse\n    Wscript.Echo “The strings are not equal.”\nEnd If\n<\/PRE>\n
And in case you\u2019re wondering, our Scripting Guy eventually did<\/I> come up with \u201cKansas\u201d as a word that started with the letter K<\/I>. Good for him!<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a script that compares two email addresses and tells me whether or not they are the same. Sometimes the email addresses are the same, but the case is different: for example, one address might be example@abc.com and the other might be example@ABC.com. My script always tells me that these are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,4,21,5],"class_list":["post-69543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-string-manipulation","tag-vbscript"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a script that compares two email addresses and tells me whether or not they are the same. Sometimes the email addresses are the same, but the case is different: for example, one address might be example@abc.com and the other might be example@ABC.com. My script always tells me that these are […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}