Problem Statement

Given a   list   of arbitrarily many strings, show how to:

Each of those two tests should result in a single true or false value, which could be used as the condition of an   if   statement or similar. If the input list has less than two elements, the tests should always return true. There is no need to provide a complete program and output. Assume that the strings are already stored in an array/list/sequence/tuple variable (whatever is most idiomatic) with the name   strings,   and just show the expressions for performing those two tests on it (plus of course any includes and custom functions etc. that it needs),   with as little distractions as possible. Try to write your solution in a way that does not modify the original list,   but if it does then please add a note to make that clear to readers. If you need further guidance/clarification,   see #Perl and #Python for solutions that use implicit short-circuiting loops,   and #Raku for a solution that gets away with simply using a built-in language feature.

Let's start with the solution:

// a function to test if a list of strings are equal
def stringsEqual(stringList)
	// if the list is empty, return true
	if (len(stringList) = 0)
		return true
	end

	// otherwise get the first value and check for equality
	toCompare = stringList[0]
	equal = true
	for (i = 1) (equal && (i < len(stringList))) (i = i + 1)
		equal = (toCompare = stringList[i])
	end for


	// return whether the strings are equal or not
	return equal
end

// a function to test if a list of strings are are less than each other
def stringsLessThan(stringList)
	// if the list is empty, return true
	if (len(stringList) = 0)
		return true
	end

	// otherwise get the first value and check for less than
	toCompare = stringList[0]
	lessThan = true
	for (i = 1) (lessThan && (i < len(stringList))) (i = i + 1)
		lessThan = (toCompare < stringList[i])
		toCompare = stringList[i]
	end for

	// return whether the string were less than each other or not
	return lessThan
end