Question

I have below five Integer variables and during the program, they are assigned some values randomly. I want to get the largest variable name but not the variable value. And I want to know if at least two of them have the same value. Please provide an example. Thank you.

int politics_counter = 0;
        int economics_counter = 0;
        int foreign_counter = 0;
        int sport_counter = 0;
        int weather_counter = 0;

Answer 1

And now for an answer (kind of)

public class MyThingie {

TreeMap<Integer, String> data = new TreeMap<Integer, String>();

public void doIt() {
    ...

    insertElement("politics_counter", politics_counter);
    insertElement("economics_counter", economics_counter);
    insertElement("foreign_counter", foreign_counter);
    insertElement("sport_counter", sport_counter);
    insertElement("weather_counter", weather_counter);

    System.out.println("Highest variable is "+data.lastEntry().getValue());
}

public void insertElement(String name, Integer i) {
    if (data.get(i) == null) {
        System.out.println("Element "+name+" has the name value as "+data.get(i));
    }
    else {
        data.put(name,i);
    }
}
}

and now for a more interesting answer:

public class BiggestFinder {
    public void showBiggester(Object o) throws Exception {
        TreeMap<Integer, String> data = new TreeMap<Integer, String)();
        for (Field f  : o.getDeclaredFields()) {
            Object v = f.getValue(o);
            if (v instanceof Integer) {
                if (data.get(v)!=null) {
                    System.out.println("Value for "+f.getName()+" is the same as "+data.get(v));
                }
                else {
                    data.put((Integer)f.getValue(o), f.getName());
                }
            }
        }

        System.out.println("Largest is "+data.lastEntry().getValue());
    }
}

which will interrogate an object and show the largest field, given that the object has members that are all Integers and that are all accessible to this method. There’s a way to fudge that and improve it to make it more “robust”.