Java™ How To Program (Early Objects), Tenth Edition

14.3.3 Comparing Strings

Chapter 19 discusses sorting and searching arrays. Frequently, the information being sorted or searched consists of Strings that must be compared to place them into order or to determine whether a string appears in an array (or other collection). Class String provides methods for comparing strings, as demonstrated in the next two examples.

To understand what it means for one string to be greater than or less than another, consider the process of alphabetizing a series of last names. No doubt, you’d place “Jones” before “Smith” because the first letter of “Jones” comes before the first letter of “Smith” in the alphabet. But the alphabet is more than just a list of 26 letters—it’s an ordered list of characters. Each letter ...