You can use the following operators to compare strings: <, <=, !=, ==, =>, and >. These operators can be used with conditional statements, such as if and while, as the following example shows:

var str1:String = "Apple";
var str2:String = "apple";
if (str1 < str2)
{
   trace("A < a, B < b, C < c, ...");
}

When using these operators with strings, ActionScript considers the character code value of each character in the string, comparing characters from left to right, as in the following:

trace("A" < "B"); // true
trace("A" < "a"); // true
trace("Ab" < "az"); // true
trace("abc" < "abza"); // true

Use the == and != operators to compare strings with each other and to compare strings with other types of objects, as the following example shows:

var str1:String = "1";
var str1b:String = "1";
var str2:String = "2";
trace(str1 == str1b); // true
trace(str1 == str2); // false
var total:uint = 1;
trace(str1 == total); // true