What is the correct lexicographical order of the strings "Aardvark" and "Aardvandermeer"?

In lexicographical order, strings are compared based on the Unicode values of their characters, much like how words are arranged in a dictionary.

When comparing "Aardvark" and "Aardvandermeer", the evaluation starts from the first characters of both strings. Both start with 'A', then 'a', and then 'r'. The comparison continues character by character until a difference is found. In this case, "Aardvark" has an additional character compared to "Aardvandermeer" after all earlier characters match.

Since "Aardvark" has fewer total characters than "Aardvandermeer", it will come first in lexicographical order. Therefore, "Aardvark" is indeed the correct choice, confirming that it appears before "Aardvandermeer" in this specific ordering system.

Each string is treated like a sequence of characters, and the shorter string that has characters matching the longer string until the shorter string ends takes precedence. This fundamental understanding of string comparison is crucial in programming and data organization tasks.