Case-insensitive string comparison in C++ [closed]

The trouble with boost is that you have to link with and depend on boost. Not easy in some cases (e.g. android).

And using char_traits means all your comparisons are case insensitive, which isn’t usually what you want.

This should suffice. It should be reasonably efficient. Doesn’t handle unicode or anything though.

bool iequals(const string& a, const string& b)
{
    unsigned int sz = a.size();
    if (b.size() != sz)
        return false;
    for (unsigned int i = 0; i < sz; ++i)
        if (tolower(a[i]) != tolower(b[i]))
            return false;
    return true;
}

Update: Bonus C++14 version (#include <algorithm>):

bool iequals(const string& a, const string& b)
{
    return std::equal(a.begin(), a.end(),
                      b.begin(), b.end(),
                      [](char a, char b) {
                          return tolower(a) == tolower(b);
                      });
}

Update: C++20 version using std::ranges:

#include <ranges>
#include <algorithm>
#include <string>

bool iequals(const std::string_view& lhs, const std::string_view& rhs) {
    auto to_lower{ std::ranges::views::transform(std::tolower) };
    return std::ranges::equal(lhs | to_lower, rhs | to_lower);
}

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