Sorting Strings and extracting common elements of two String arrays in Java

Question

I was asked to write down a Java function sharedStr that by given 2 sorted arrays of Strings, returns the number of Strings that appea

Answer 1

1. Strings are usually ordered in lexicographic fashion (alphabetical). However, as long as the ordering is consistent, the exact ordering method is not important for this problem (they could be reverse sorted for instance).
2. Java compares objects (not object references) using .equals() (for boolean) or .compareTo() (for relational comparison) For instance:

.

String a = "Hello";
a.equals("Hello"); // true
String b = "Not hi";
b.equals(a); // false

Be careful accidentally using == - for constant strings, due to VM designs, it may actually say two Strings are equal, as they are in fact the same object.