Question

I have an arraylist with string values like

ArrayList<String> datestring=new ArrayList<String>();
datestring.add("01/21/2013 @03:13 PM");
datestring.add("01/21/2013 @04:37 PM");
datestring.add("01/21/2013 @10:41 AM");
datestring.add("01/21/2013 @10:48 AM");
datestring.add("01/22/2013 @06:16 AM");
datestring.add("01/22/2013 @06:19 AM");
datestring.add("01/21/2013 @05:19 PM");
datestring.add("01/21/2013 @05:19 PM");

Can any body help me on sorting the above list? So that the values are sorted according to AM and PM format.
The expected output after sorting should be

for (String s : datestring)
{
    System.out.println(s);
}

.

01/21/2013 @10:41 AM;
01/21/2013 @10:48 AM;
01/21/2013 @03:13 PM;
01/21/2013 @04:37 PM;
01/21/2013 @05:16 PM;
01/21/2013 @05:19 PM;
01/22/2013 @06:16 AM;
01/22/2013 @06:19 AM;

Answer 1

try this

    Collections.sort(datestring, new Comparator<String>() {
        DateFormat f = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy '@'hh:mm a");
        @Override
        public int compare(String o1, String o2) {
            try {
                return f.parse(o1).compareTo(f.parse(o2));
            } catch (ParseException e) {
                throw new IllegalArgumentException(e);
            }
        }
    });

or with Java 8

    DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MM/dd/yyyy '@'hh:mm a");
    Collections.sort(datestring, (s1, s2) -> LocalDateTime.parse(s1, formatter).
            compareTo(LocalDateTime.parse(s2, formatter)));