title: accessing first character of an string and comparing it with an char MIPS
body: <p>I want to compare a first character of a string with '#' char. If these are equal I want to print "they're equal" in mips. To do this, I've written a piece of code as below.However it does not give me an output even if they're equal. Is there anyone to help me ? 
  Thanks in advance.</p>
  
  <pre><code>.data 
  input:          .space 201
  string2:    .asciiz "they're equal.\n"
  finish:         .byte '#'
  .text
  main:
          la $a0,input
          li $a1,201          #read 200 char 
          li $v0,8            #read string
          syscall 
  
          jal evaluate
  
  evaluate:
          lw $t1, 0($a0)
          lw $t2,finish
          beq $t1,$t2,testi
  
  testi:
          la $a0,string2
          li $v0,4
          syscall
  
          li $v0, 10
          syscall
  </code></pre>