Char Comparison in C

Question

I'm trying to compare two chars to see if one is greater than the other. To see if they were equal, I used strcmp. Is there anything similar to strcmp that I can use?

Answer 1

A char variable is actually an 8-bit integral value. It will have values from 0 to 255. These are almost always ASCII codes, but other encodings are allowed. 0 stands for the C-null character, and 255 stands for an empty symbol.

So, when you write the following assignment:

char a = 'a'; 

It is the same thing as this on an ASCII system.

char a = 97;

So, you can compare two char variables using the >, <, ==, <=, >= operators:

char a = 'a';
char b = 'b';

if( a < b ) printf("%c is smaller than %c", a, b);
if( a > b ) printf("%c is smaller than %c", a, b);
if( a == b ) printf("%c is equal to %c", a, b);

Note that even if ASCII is not required, this function will work because C requires that the digits are in consecutive order:

int isdigit(char c) {
    if(c >= '0' && c <= '9') 
        return 1;
    return 0;
} 

Answer 2

In C the char type has a numeric value so the > operator will work just fine for example

#include <stdio.h>
main() {

    char a='z';

    char b='h';

    if ( a > b ) {
        printf("%c greater than %c\n",a,b);
    }
}