Comparing strings in VB.NET

Question

Hopefully this should be an easy question. In Java I think it's compareTo().

How do I compare two string variables to determine if they are the same?

ie:

If (string1 = string2 And string3 = string4) Then
    'perform operation
Else
    'perform another operation
End If

Answer 1

I would suggest using the String.Compare method. Using that method you can also control whether to have it perform case-sensitive comparisons or not.

Sample:

Dim str1 As String = "String one"
Dim str2 As String = str1
Dim str3 As String = "String three"
Dim str4 As String = str3

If String.Compare(str1, str2) = 0 And String.Compare(str3, str4) = 0 Then
    MessageBox.Show("str1 = str2 And str3 = str4")
Else
    MessageBox.Show("Else")
End If

Edit: If you want to perform a case-insensitive search you can use the StringComparison parameter:

If String.Compare(str1, str2, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) = 0 And String.Compare(str3, str4, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) = 0 Then