8.10: String comparison

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.

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