Different ways to compare Strings in Golang

In Go language, the string is an immutable chain of arbitrary bytes encoded with UTF-8 encoding. You are allowed to compare strings with each other using two different ways:

1. Using comparison operators: Go strings support comparison operators, i.e, ==, !=, >=, <=, <, >. Here, the == and != operator are used to check if the given strings are equal or not, and >=, <=, <, > operators are used to find the lexical order. The results of these operators are of Boolean type, meaning if the condition is satisfied it will return true, otherwise, return false.

Example 1:

Go

// Go program to illustrate the concept
// of == and != operator with strings
package main

import "fmt"

// Main function
func main() {

    // Creating and initializing strings
    // using shorthand declaration
    str1 := "Geeks"
    str2 := "Geek"
    str3 := "GeeksforGeeks"
    str4 := "Geeks"

    // Checking the string are equal
    // or not using == operator
    result1 := str1 == str2
    result2 := str2 == str3
    result3 := str3 == str4
    result4 := str1 == str4

    fmt.Println("Result 1: ", result1)
    fmt.Println("Result 2: ", result2)
    fmt.Println("Result 3: ", result3)
    fmt.Println("Result 4: ", result4)

    // Checking the string are not equal
    // using != operator
    result5 := str1 != str2
    result6 := str2 != str3
    result7 := str3 != str4
    result8 := str1 != str4

    fmt.Println("\nResult 5: ", result5)
    fmt.Println("Result 6: ", result6)
    fmt.Println("Result 7: ", result7)
    fmt.Println("Result 8: ", result8)

}

Output:

Result 1:  false
Result 2:  false
Result 3:  false
Result 4:  true

Result 5:  true
Result 6:  true
Result 7:  true
Result 8:  false

Example 2:

Go

// Go program to illustrate the concept
// of comparison operator with strings
package main

import "fmt"

// Main function
func main() {

    // Creating and initializing
    // slice of string using the
    // shorthand declaration
    myslice := []string{"Geeks", "Geeks",
                    "gfg", "GFG", "for"}

    fmt.Println("Slice: ", myslice)

    // Using comparison operator
    result1 := "GFG" > "Geeks"
    fmt.Println("Result 1: ", result1)

    result2 := "GFG" < "Geeks"
    fmt.Println("Result 2: ", result2)

    result3 := "Geeks" >= "for"
    fmt.Println("Result 3: ", result3)

    result4 := "Geeks" <= "for"
    fmt.Println("Result 4: ", result4)

    result5 := "Geeks" == "Geeks"
    fmt.Println("Result 5: ", result5)

    result6 := "Geeks" != "for"
    fmt.Println("Result 6: ", result6)

}

Output:

Slice:  [Geeks Geeks gfg GFG for]
Result 1:  false
Result 2:  true
Result 3:  false
Result 4:  true
Result 5:  true
Result 6:  true

2. Using Compare() method: You can also compare two strings using the built-in function Compare() provided by the strings package. This function returns an integer value after comparing two strings lexicographically. The return values are: 

• Return 0, if str1 == str2.
• Return 1, if str1 > str2.
• Return -1, if str1 < str2.

Syntax: 

func Compare(str1, str2 string) int

Example:

Go

// Go program to illustrate how to compare
// string using compare() function
package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "strings"
)

func main() {

    // Comparing string using Compare function
    fmt.Println(strings.Compare("gfg", "Geeks"))

    fmt.Println(strings.Compare("GeeksforGeeks",
                               "GeeksforGeeks"))

    fmt.Println(strings.Compare("Geeks", " GFG"))

    fmt.Println(strings.Compare("GeeKS", "GeeKs"))

}

Output:

1
0
1
-1