Question

I’ve read a few tutorials on customizing Arrays.sort, and a lot of googling, but I’m missing the answer. Right now Arrays.sort(charList) does nothing. Here’s what my code looks like.

public class character implements Comparable<character>{

//public vars
public String charName;
public int initModifier;
public int initRoll;
public int secondInit;
/* ... getters, setters, other vars .. */
    @Override
    public int compareTo(character another) {
        int compareInit = ((character) another).getTotalInit();
        int comp = this.totalInit - compareInit;
        int compareSecondInit = ((character) another).getTotalInit();

        if (comp != 0)
        {
            return comp;
        }
        else
        {
            return this.secondInit - compareSecondInit;
        }
    }
}

The main activity is a bundle of stuff. The part that deals with the arrays.sort follows:

//add a character to the array.
public void addResults(character c)
{
    debugInt++; //using this to debug
    if(debugInt==3)
    {
        Log.d(tag,charList[0].charName); //always prints the first object entered
        Log.d(tag,charList[1].charName); //always prints the second object entered
    }
    if (playersPerTurn<charLimit)
    {
        charList[playersPerTurn]=c;
        Arrays.sort(charList,0,playersPerTurn); 
        playersPerTurn++;
        updateDisplay();
    }
}

Help me SO, you’re my only hope.

Answer 1

int compareSecondInit = ((character) another).getTotalInit();

You probably wanted getSecondInit() here.

Your compareTo() with this bug is not consistent – and thus the result is undefined.

for example:

element1:
totalInit = 1
secondInit = 2
element2:
totalInit = 1
secondInit = 2

element1.compareTo(element2) == 2 - 1 == 1
element2.compareTo(element1) == 2 - 1 == 1

As a side note, about coding practice:

1. Naming a class character is confusing, you should consider renaming it.
2. In java, the convention is that class names start with upper case letters. It will help fellow programmers to easily understand character is a class and not a field.