Sorting an ArrayList of objects using a custom sorting order

Question

I am looking to implement a sort feature for my address book application.

I want to sort an ArrayList contactArray. Contact

Answer 1

The Collections.sort is a good sort implementation. If you don't have The comparable implemented for Contact, you will need to pass in a Comparator implementation

Of note:

The sorting algorithm is a modified mergesort (in which the merge is omitted if the highest element in the low sublist is less than the lowest element in the high sublist). This algorithm offers guaranteed n log(n) performance. The specified list must be modifiable, but need not be resizable. This implementation dumps the specified list into an array, sorts the array, and iterates over the list resetting each element from the corresponding position in the array. This avoids the n2 log(n) performance that would result from attempting to sort a linked list in place.

The merge sort is probably better than most search algorithm you can do.