Comparison in Java

The various types of Java are compared in different ways:

• The primitive types int, long, float and double are compared using < and >. They cannot use .compareTo() .

• String uses .compareTo(); it cannot use < and >. .compareTo() for String is case-sensitive.

• An application object type can be given a .compareTo() method, but that allows only one way of sorting. We might want a case-insensitive comparison for String.

• A Comparator can be passed as a function argument, and this allows a custom comparison method. The Java library has a case-insensitive Comparator for String.

Sometimes it is necessary to implement several versions of the same method in order to use different methods of comparison on its arguments.