Sort on a string that may contain a number

Question

I need to write a Java Comparator class that compares Strings, however with one twist. If the two strings it is comparing are the same at the beginning and end of the strin

Answer 1

interesting problem, and here my proposed solution:

import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Vector;

public class CompareToken implements Comparable
{
    int valN;
    String valS;
    String repr;

    public String toString() {
    return repr;
    }

    public CompareToken(String s) {
    int l = 0;
    char data[] = new char[s.length()];
    repr = s;
    valN = 0;
    for (char c : s.toCharArray()) {
        if(Character.isDigit(c))
        valN = valN * 10 + (c - '0');
        else
        data[l++] = c;
    }

    valS = new String(data, 0, l);
    }

    public int compareTo(CompareToken b) {
    int r = valS.compareTo(b.valS);
    if (r != 0)
        return r;

    return valN - b.valN;
    }


    public static void main(String [] args) {
    String [] strings = {
        "aaa",
        "bbb3ccc",
        "bbb12ccc",
        "ccc 11",
        "ffffd",
        "eee3ffffdjpeg2000eee",
        "eee12ffffdjpeg2000eee"
    };

    Vector data = new Vector();
    for(String s : strings)
        data.add(new CompareToken(s));
    Collections.shuffle(data);

    Collections.sort(data);
    for (CompareToken c : data)
        System.out.println ("" + c);
    }

}