Question

OK, here is my problem. I need to take a array of Strings and sort it alphabetically and then print out the first String: For example, a string of “Georgia, Florida, Alabama”, It should print out Alabama. The Strings are not submitted by the user, i have a file with a bunch of states that is inputed as an array.

This is what I have:

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
public class MinString
{
    private static final int SIZE = 10;
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
            String[] list = new String[SIZE];
            int numItems;

            numItems = Initialize (list);
            System.out.println(numItems);
    }

    private static int Initialize (String[] list)
    {
      //post : List is initialized with all strings from file.

      String filename, stateInput;
      int i = 0, numItems = 0;
      try  {
            System.out.print("Input File : ");
            Scanner stdin = new Scanner(System.in);
            filename = stdin.nextLine();
            stdin = new Scanner(new File(filename));

            while ((stdin.hasNext()) && (i < list.length))
            {
                    stateInput = stdin.nextLine();
                    System.out.println("S = " + stateInput);
                    list[i] = stateInput;
                    i++;
            }
            numItems = i;
      }
      catch (IOException e)  {
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
      }
      return numItems;
    }

    // Method FindMin goes here
 private static String FindMin (String[] list, numItems);
 ?????

}

I’m not sure how to write this FindMin Method. I need to write FindMin so that it takes as input an array of size numItems of strings and returns to the calling function the minimum string.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

private static String findMin(String[] list) {
    String minState = list[0]; 
    for(int i=1; i<list.length; i++){
        String min=list[i];
        minState=(min!=null&&min.compareTo(minState)<0)?min:minState;
    }
    return minState;
}