Java Projects - Second Edition

Optimizing the Sort - Making Code Professional

In this chapter, we will develop the sorting code and make it more general. We want to sort something that is more general and not only an array of strings. Essentially, we will write a program that can sort anything that is sortable. That way, we will bring the coding to its full extent toward one of the major strengths of Java—abstraction.

Abstraction, however, does not come without a price tag. When you have a class that sorts strings and you accidentally mix an integer or something else that is not a string into the sortable data, then the compiler will complain about it. Java does not allow you to put an int into an String array. When the code is more abstract, such programming errors may ...