Assembly, NEED GUIDANCE WITH REPE CMPSB

the repe cmpsb is confusing me a bit. i know very well that repe cmpsb will compare string bytewise until equal or cx=0 .. BUT when i try to confirm this with a simple program, no matter whether the strings are equal or not, i always get a mismatch.
can anyone please guide me and explain what i am doing wrong.. would be a great help
"i am comparing two strings v1 & v2 both having the string 'apple', the answer however results in mismatch" Here is the code

Code:

    .model small
    .data
       mese    db "match!","$"
       mesne   db "mismatch!","$"
       v1 db "apple","$"
       v2 db "apple","$"
    .code
    main proc
    mov ax,@data
    mov ds,ax   
    
    mov si,offset v1
    mov di,offset v2
    
    mov cx,5
    
    repe cmpsb
    je equal
    
    mov dx,offset mesne
    jmp print
    equal:
    mov dx,offset mese
    print:
    mov ah,09h
    int 21h 
    
    mov ah,4ch
    int 21h
    
    main endp
    end main

 

Does it make any difference if you start your code with CLD (clear direction flag)?

 

cld just clears the direction flag.. and i found out why my program is problematic. the issue is that the cmpsb needs the extra segment. ES:SI - ESI ..

the only addition to make this code perfect is adding mov es,ax after mov ds,ax

Code:

mov ds,ax
mov es,ax