Question

Say, we have the following 2-dimensional array:

int camels[][] = new int[n][2];

How should Java Comparator class be declared to sort the arrays by their first elements in decreasing order using Arrays.sort(camels, comparator)? The compare function for reference is:

@Override public int compare(int[] a, int [] b)
{
    return b[0] - a[0];
}

Answer 1

[…] How should Java Comparator class be declared to sort the arrays by their first elements in decreasing order […]

Here’s a complete example using Java 8:

import java.util.*;

public class Test {

    public static void main(String args[]) {

        int[][] twoDim = { {1, 2}, {3, 7}, {8, 9}, {4, 2}, {5, 3} };

        Arrays.sort(twoDim, Comparator.comparingInt(a -> a[0])
                                      .reversed());

        System.out.println(Arrays.deepToString(twoDim));
    }
}

Output:

[[8, 9], [5, 3], [4, 2], [3, 7], [1, 2]]

---

For Java 7 you can do:

Arrays.sort(twoDim, new Comparator<int[]>() {
    @Override
    public int compare(int[] o1, int[] o2) {
        return Integer.compare(o2[0], o1[0]);
    }
});

---

If you unfortunate enough to work on Java 6 or older, you’d do:

Arrays.sort(twoDim, new Comparator<int[]>() {
    @Override
    public int compare(int[] o1, int[] o2) {
        return ((Integer) o2[0]).compareTo(o1[0]);
    }
});