There are different methods to check two text strings are equal or not in PHP. This article defines the methods which can be used for comparing two text strings.

1. '==' : == operator is most commonly used operator for comparing two strings. If the text of both strings are same, it returns TRUE, otherwise returns FALSE.

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$str1 = "Hello Friends";
$str2 = "Hello Friends";
if($str1 == $str2){
 echo "Matched";
}else{
 echo "Not Matched";
}

$str1 = "Hello Friends";
$str2 = "Hello Friends";
if($str1 == $str2){
 echo "Matched";
}else{
 echo "Not Matched";
}

Output : Matched

2. strcmp() : strcmp() is a built-in function in PHP, which is used to compare two strings. strcmp() function is used to perform binary safe string comparison. It returns the integer value as a result which defines the following cases :

• 0 : If both strings are equal
• >0 : If first string is bigger than second string
• <0 : If first string is smaller than second string

Example 1:

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$str1 = "Hello Friends";
$str2 = "Hello Friends";
echo strcmp($str1, $str2);

$str1 = "Hello Friends";
$str2 = "Hello Friends";
echo strcmp($str1, $str2);

Output : 0

Example 2:

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$str1 = "Hello Friends";
$str2 = "Hello";
echo strcmp($str1, $str2);

$str1 = "Hello Friends";
$str2 = "Hello";
echo strcmp($str1, $str2);

Output : 8

The above two methods compare strings in case-sensitive manner, PHP also provides strcasecmp() function to compare strings in case-insensitive manner. strcasecmp() returns the same results like strcmp().

Example : a. Case-sensitive comparison

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$str1 = "Hello Friends";
$str2 = "hello Friends";
echo strcmp($str1, $str2);

$str1 = "Hello Friends";
$str2 = "hello Friends";
echo strcmp($str1, $str2);

Output : -32

b. Case-insensitive comparison

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$str1 = "Hello Friends";
$str2 = "hello friends";
echo strcasecmp($str1, $str2);

$str1 = "Hello Friends";
$str2 = "hello friends";
echo strcasecmp($str1, $str2);

Output : 0