Comparable and Comparator

[jeanjiang]

When we want to sort a collection, we can use class Comparable or Comparator.
My question is what is the difference between them.

[sunde887]

They are similar, googling will answer for the most part.

Comparator forces you to implement compareTo, which makes the object this(keyword), compare itself to the argument object.

With comparable, it compares two objects.

 Comparable enforces
 int 	compareTo(T o)
          Compares this object with the specified object for order.

comparator enforces
 int 	compare(T o1, T o2)
          Compares its two arguments for order.

Others may have to give more details, perhaps I will learn something, I am having a hard time conveying my thoughts fully.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+the+dif...arator+in+java

I believe this explanation will illustrate my thoughts.

Lets say you have a class for peoples addresses, it has names, phone numbers, and addresses. If you would like to sort it by each of these things which would you do?
You could have the address class implement comparable, the problem is it only allows you to sort one way. Perhaps you could have an inner class that implements comparable? This wouldn't work because it uses this to compare the argument with, the this in an inner class would be the inner class, not the actual class.

If you use comparators you can have an inner class which takes two objects and lets you compare and sort based on different things.

In the address example you can have 3 inner classes which all implement comparators. Each of these comparators would sort based on a different instance variable(address, name, number)

[Junky]

From the Collections class:

sort(List<T> list) 
sort(List<T> list, Comparator<? super T> c)

If you call the first method all the Objects in the List must implement Comparable. If you call the other sort method you must write your own class that implements Comparator and pass an object of that class to the method. They basically do the same thing. It just depends upon your design.

[Fubarable]

Comparable is for when you want to sort a class by its "natural order", the one and main way it should be sorted. For it to work, the objects being sorted must implement the Comparable interface and have the proper compareTo method. The Comparator is for when the objects being sorted do not implement Comparable and so you must create a separate class that implements Comparator and usually has a single public method, compare.

[Junky]

Also, imagine you have a Collection of people (Person class). If you use the Comparator way to sort, then you can have 2 or more Comparators: one to sort by last name, one to sort by first name, one to sort by address etc. If the Person class implements Comparable then you are stuck with sorting in only one way.

[r035198x]

Also, oftentimes you will not be able to rewrite (other people's) classes to make them implement Comparable and that's when writting a Comparator for them is the only way to sort them.

[mopurilakshmikarreddy]

Comparable :
It uses the compareTo() method.
int objectOne.compareTo(objectTwo).
It is necessary to modify the class whose instance is going to be sorted.
Only one sort sequence can be created.
It is frequently used by the API classes.

Comparator:
it uses the compare() method.
int compare(ObjOne, ObjTwo)
A separate class can be created in order to sort the instances.
Many sort sequences can be created.
It used by third-party classes to sort instances.

[JosAH]

There's another difference: an object implementing the Comparable<T> interface can do what it wants because the interface implementation is part of the object. A Comparator<T> implementation can only compare those details from an object that are made visible to the outside world.

kind regards,

Jos