How does string comparison work in Haskell? [duplicate]

This question already has an answer here:

• How are strings compared in haskell? 3 answers

I can't understand how Haskell compares between two Strings (of different length).

For example,

"abc" <= "ab"

returns False, whereas

"abc" <= "ac"

returns True.

Doesn't Haskell compare two Strings character by character? In the first example, I would have thought that

• "a"<="a"


• "b"<="b"


• "c"<=""

and in the second example, I would have thought that

• "a"<="a"


• "b"<="c"


• "c"<=""

What am I getting wrong?