Question

Is there a quick way to select the longer of two strings? I want to circumvent having to do

if(string1 > string2)
  do a;
else if(string2 > string1)
  do b;

Answer 1

String have a method length you can use:

if(string1.length() > string2.length())
  do a;
else if(string2.length() > string1.length()
  do b;

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Edit: I misunderstood your question. This would be a shorter way to write it using a ternary operator:

String longest = (string1.length() > string2.length()) ? string1 : string2;

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I don’t know why you are looking for a shorter way to write it since your original way gives much more readability than using a ternary operator. If the reason is that you’re going to get the longest string many times I’d recommend to extract the comparison to a method that returns the longest string instead. E.g:

public String getLongestString(String s1, String s2) {
   if(s1.length() > s2.length())
      return s1;
   else
      return s2;
}