Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform, Fifth Edition

9.13. Building Comparable Objects (IComparable)

The System.IComparable interface specifies a behavior that allows an object to be sorted based on some specified key. Here is the formal definition:

// This interface allows an object to specify its
// relationship between other like objects.
public interface IComparable
{
  int CompareTo(object o);
}

NOTE

The generic version of this interface (IComparable<T>) provides a more type-safe manner to handle comparisons between objects. You'll examine generics in Chapter 10.

Let's assume you have a new Console Application named ComparableCar that defines the following updated Car class (notice that we have basically just added a new property to represent a unique ID for each car and a modified constructor): ...