Java Projects - Second Edition

The general sorting program

In the previous chapter, we implemented a simple sorting algorithm. The code can sort elements of a String array. We did this to learn. For practical use, there is a ready-cooked sort solution in the JDK that can sort members of Collection objects that are comparable.

The JDK contains a utility class called Collections, which itself contains a static method, Collections.sort. This method can sort any List that has members that are Comparable (more precisely, members that are instances of a class that implements the Comparable interface). List and Comparable are interfaces defined in the JDK. Thus, if we want to sort a list of Strings, the simplest solution is as follows:

public class SimplestStringListSortTest ...