String Comparison

The comparison operators work on strings. To see if two strings are equal:

>>> if word == 'hello':

...    print 'Say hello to my little friend.'

...

Say hello to my little friend.

Other comparison operations are useful for putting words in alphabetical order:

>>> word = 'Pineapple'

>>> if word < 'hello':

...    print 'Your word,' + word + ', comes before hello.'

... elif word > 'hello':

...    print 'Your word,' + word + ', comes after hello.'

... else:

...    print 'All right, hello.'

...

Your word,Pineapple, comes before hello.

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.