Uva 11732 strcmp() Anyone?

strcmp() is a library function in C/C++ which compares two strings. It takes two strings as input parameter and decides which one is lexicographically larger or smaller: If the first string is greater then it returns a positive value, if the second string is greater it returns a negative value and if two strings are equal it returns a zero. The code that is used to compare two strings in C/C++ library is shown below:

The number of comparisons required to compare two strings in strcmp() function is never returned by the function. But for this problem you will have to do just that at a larger scale. strcmp() function continues to compare characters in the same position of the two strings until two different characters are found or both strings come to an end. Of course it assumes that last character of a string is a null (‘ ’) character. For example the table below shows what happens when “than” and “that”; “therE” and “the” are compared using strcmp() function. To understand how 7 comparisons are needed in both cases please consult the code block given above.