Comparing strings by their alphabetical order

Question

String s1 = \"Project\";
String s2 = \"Sunject\";

I want to compare the two above string by their alphabetic order (which in this case \"Project\"

Answer 1

You can call either string's compareTo method (java.lang.String.compareTo). This feature is well documented on the java documentation site.

Here is a short program that demonstrates it:

class StringCompareExample {
    public static void main(String args[]){
        String s1 = "Project"; String s2 = "Sunject";
        verboseCompare(s1, s2);
        verboseCompare(s2, s1);
        verboseCompare(s1, s1);
    }

    public static void verboseCompare(String s1, String s2){
        System.out.println("Comparing \"" + s1 + "\" to \"" + s2 + "\"...");

        int comparisonResult = s1.compareTo(s2);
        System.out.println("The result of the comparison was " + comparisonResult);

        System.out.print("This means that \"" + s1 + "\" ");
        if(comparisonResult < 0){
            System.out.println("lexicographically precedes \"" + s2 + "\".");
        }else if(comparisonResult > 0){
            System.out.println("lexicographically follows \"" + s2 + "\".");
        }else{
            System.out.println("equals \"" + s2 + "\".");
        }
        System.out.println();
    }
}

Here is a live demonstration that shows it works: http://ideone.com/Drikp3