Sort an ArrayList of Strings that are numbers

Question

What is the fastest way to sort an ArrayList (in descending/ascending manner) that contains numbers, eg: { \"12\", \"3.5\", \"188\", \"33.03

Answer 1

I think your current approach is probably fine, I would avoid using a custom Comparator because you would end up converting the same string into a numeric value multiple times (each time the sorting algorithm wants to compare 2 values) rather than just once as you do now.