Question

I have two names from a user.

I want to compare them and display them in alphabetical order.

I tried the compareTo method, but that only returns an int.

EDIT: Answer found! Thanks again guys!

Answer 1

You say: “I have to names” — assuming that you meant “I have two names”…

If you have two strings, then you have only two possible ways you can return them. It’s either A, B or B, A. There are only three possible ways the two strings can be ordered.

Either:

• the first string comes before the second one (return them as-is)
• the second string comes before the first one (swap them, then return)
• the two strings are equal (return them in any order, it doesn’t matter)

As it turns out, according to the Java documentation, the String.compareTo() method actually gives you a value that maps to those three possible states:

The result is a negative integer if
this String object lexicographically
precedes the argument string. The
result is a positive integer if this
String object lexicographically
follows the argument string. The
result is zero if the strings are
equal; compareTo returns 0 exactly
when the equals(Object) method would
return true.