help with an assignment!

[Tek]

I am given a comparator that sorts the rank of a list of military soldiers in alphabetical order, the code is the following

public class SoldierRank implements Comparator<Soldier>{

	public int compare(Soldier left, Soldier right){
		return left.getRank().compareTo(right.getRank());
	}
}

My job is to modify the code so that it sorts the rank from high to low, like Officer Cadet, 2nd Lieutenant, Lieutenant, Captain, etc.
But i am completely clueless right now, could somebody help me out? Thanks :)

[Fubarable]

I am given a comparator that sorts the rank of a list of military soldiers in alphabetical order, the code is the following

public class SoldierRank implements Comparator<Soldier>{

	public int compare(Soldier left, Soldier right){
		return left.getRank().compareTo(right.getRank());
	}
}

My job is to modify the code so that it sorts the rank from high to low, like Officer Cadet, 2nd Lieutenant, Lieutenant, Captain, etc.
But i am completely clueless right now, could somebody help me out? Thanks :)

um.... Private Tek, it looks like the code above already does that....

[Tek]

um.... Private Tek, it looks like the code above already does that....

Thanks for replying Captain Fubarable XD. But no, the code only sorts the rank in alphabetical order like Brigadier, Captain, Colonel, etc

[Fubarable]

Thanks for replying Captain Fubarable XD. But no, the code only sorts the rank in alphabetical order like Brigadier, Captain, Colonel, etc

I see. So does this mean that rank is a String? Perhaps the best solution is to make Rank an enum or a class that implements Comparable<Rank> so that when you call compareTo on your Ranks, they'll know how to sort themselves.

[joshdgreen]

I would probably just make the ranks numbers: 1,2,3... all corresponding to a certain rank. That way you can print them out in order very easily.

[Fubarable]

I would probably just make the ranks numbers: 1,2,3... all corresponding to a certain rank. That way you can print them out in order very easily.

But this may make it somewhat difficult to debug later. Best to use enums which were added to the language for just this sort of thing. They already implement the Comparable interface and rank things based on the order of declaration. The toString can allow you to output the results ever so nicely.

[joshdgreen]

But this may make it somewhat difficult to debug later. Best to use enums which were added to the language for just this sort of thing. They already implement the Comparable interface and rank things based on the order of declaration. The toString can allow you to output the results ever so nicely.

Nice to know. I've never dealt with enums before.