how to compare two strings?

[Paul Rubin]

Is there any built-in function in Python for comparing two strings
alphabetically?  Something suitable for passing as the optional
comparison function for the list "sort" method.  I could code up
something like

  def scmp(a,b):
    if a<b: return -1
    if b<a: return 1
    return 0

but it's pretty ugly to need to do that.  I've looked in the docs but
don't see any obvious counterpart to perl's lozenge (<=>) operator.
Is there one?

Thanks.