8.10: String comparison
- Page ID
- 41964
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The relational operators work on strings. To see if two strings are equal:
if word == 'banana':
print('All right, bananas.')
Other relational operations are useful for putting words in alphabetical order:
if word < 'banana':
print('Your word, ' + word + ', comes before banana.')
elif word > 'banana':
print('Your word, ' + word + ', comes after banana.')
else:
print('All right, bananas.')
Python does not handle uppercase and lowercase letters the same way people do. All the uppercase letters come before all the lowercase letters, so:
Your word, Pineapple, comes before banana.
A common way to address this problem is to convert strings to a standard format, such as all lowercase, before performing the comparison. Keep that in mind in case you have to defend yourself against a man armed with a Pineapple.