Question

I am new to Java and am using the TreeMap Code example that was on this site but when I try to iterate through the TreeMap, I get a list of null values but when I print the map directly I can see the key/value pairs. How do I rectify this?

import java.util.*;
public class Testing {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        HashMap<String,Double> map = new HashMap<String,Double>();
        ValueComparator1 bvc =  new ValueComparator1(map);
        TreeMap<String,Double> sorted_map = new TreeMap<String,Double>(bvc);

        map.put("A",99.5);
        map.put("B",67.4);
        map.put("C",67.4);
        map.put("D",67.3);

        System.out.println("unsorted map: "+map);

        sorted_map.putAll(map);


        System.out.println("results: "+sorted_map);

        for(String key: sorted_map.keySet())
        {
            System.out.println(sorted_map.get(key)); //null values-Why?
        }
    }
}

class ValueComparator1 implements Comparator<String> {

    Map<String, Double> base;
    public ValueComparator1(Map<String, Double> base) {
        this.base = base;
    }

    // Note: this comparator imposes orderings that are inconsistent with equals.    
    public int compare(String a, String b) {
        if (base.get(a) >= base.get(b)) {
            return -1;
        } else {
            return 1;
        } // returning 0 would merge keys
    }
}

Answer 1

It doesn’t work because your comparator doesn’t return 0 when given identical keys, e.g. compare(“A”, “A”). Change it to

    public int compare(String a, String b) {
        Double va = base.get(a);
        Double vb = base.get(b);
        if(va > vb) {
            return -1;
        } else if(va < vb) {
            return 1;
        } else {
            return a.compareTo(b);
        }
    }

and it’ll work.