Package com.yahoo.collections

Class CollectionComparator

java.lang.Object

com.yahoo.collections.CollectionComparator

public class CollectionComparator
extends Object

Utility class which is useful when implementing Comparable and one needs to compare Collections of Comparables as instance variables.

Author:

Einar M R Rosenvinge

Constructor Summary

Constructors

Constructor	Description
CollectionComparator()

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method	Description
static int	compare(Collection<? extends Comparable> first, Collection<? extends Comparable> second)	Compare the arguments.

Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object

clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait

Constructor Details

CollectionComparator

public CollectionComparator()

Method Details

compare

public static int compare(Collection<? extends Comparable> first,
 Collection<? extends Comparable> second)

Compare the arguments. Shorter Collections are always considered smaller than longer Collections. For Collections of equal lengths, the elements are compared one-by-one. Whenever two corresponding elements in the two Collections are non-equal, the method returns. If all elements at corresponding positions in the two Collections are equal, the Collections are considered equal.

Parameters:

first - a Collection of Comparables to be compared

second - a Collection of Comparables to be compared

Returns:

0 if the arguments are equal, -1 if the first argument is smaller, 1 if the second argument is smaller

Throws:

NullPointerException - if any of the arguments are null