Question

I am writing a compareTo method for the Comparable Interface for a specific class. I need to take two different strings and compare them and see if one holds a greater value than the other. I would normally use .compareTo() but in this case it is giving me an error and not working.
This is what I have:

public int compareTo(Object o) {
    if (name < ((AccountOwnerComparable) o).name)
        return -1;
    else if (name > ((AccountOwnerComparable) o).name)
        return 1;
    else
        return 0;

}

I know I can’t use the < or > but it is just to show what the scenario is.

Answer 1

You might have missed a bracket or something while casting. Try the following piece of code.

public int compareTo(Object o) {
    if (name.compareTo(((AccountOwnerComparable) o).name) > 0) {
        System.out.println("Greater");
        return -1;
    } else if (name.compareTo(((AccountOwnerComparable) o).name) < 0) {
        System.out.println("Lesser");
        return 1;
    } else {
        System.out.println("Equal");
        return 0;
    }

}