Compares strings in a different way than numerals: the more digits a positive integer has, the greater it is, but that's not true for strings. Their order is similar to the alphabetic one for the same case words.  When comparing lowercase and uppercase letters, the alphabetic order has a distinct feature. For example, all Latin-script uppercase letters are less than any lowercase letter in ASCII encoding, therefore Z a. Furthermore, we can compare any symbols with letters because they all map to integer values, and we understand how to compare integers.