Sorting by Last Name

[burrish]

Yes, this is as basic as it gets, but I'm not finding the information that I want. Let's say that "John Smith" is the string in a single element of an array, and I want to sort by last name. I guess splitting the string at the space wouldn't help since it would separate the first and last name? I'm trying to figure out how to start alphabetizing everything after the space in a string. What string method do I need to be thinking of in a situation like this?

[mwr1976]

I would use the indexOf method for the space in between the names. Then the charAt(indexOf +1) method would return the first letter of the last name. Which you could just
iterate through each letter of the last name by incrementing the indexOf method.

hope it helps

[Fubarable]

A couple of suggestions:
1) split the String and create a new String that is lastName, firstName, and sort those,
2) create a class with two (or more) fields for the Name Strings, say called MyName, and have it implement Comparable<MyName>, give it a compareTo method that sorts on the last name, and sort it that way.
3) Then figure out what you're going to do about common but non-standard names that wouldn't work for your task, such as Claus von Bülow and Ludwig van Beethoven.

[burrish]

A couple of suggestions:
1) split the String and create a new String that is lastName, firstName, and sort those,
2) create a class with two (or more) fields for the Name Strings, say called MyName, and have it implement Comparable<MyName>, give it a compareTo method that sorts on the last name, and sort it that way.
3) Then figure out what you're going to do about common but non-standard names that wouldn't work for your task, such as Claus von Bülow and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Thank you both for your replies!

Fubarable, what method should I be thinking about when swapping the first and last name? Once it splits, should I swap them using some type of loop that switches their position in the array while keeping them associated, correctly?

[Fubarable]

Myself, I'd go for creating a class that holds the first name and last name and that implements Comparable.