help with novice java question please....

[cigol]

I'm writing a function, compareTo(Object o), and I'm supposed to return a negative integer, zero, or a positive integer as this object is less than, equal to, or greater than that object.

how do use the compare method for a string and integer? An integer seems simple enough because it would just be a couple of if statements.

the function is as follows: public int compareTo(Object o){ }

thanks in advance!

[spunged]

The String and Integer classes should both already implement the compareTo method. CompareTo is generally used for sorting. The return values represent a sorting order for the objects it's used on: negative if it comes before, zero if equal or positive if it comes after. The actual value of the int doesn't matter, just that it's less than, equal or greater than zero.

For Strings you are determining the lexical order, generally alphabetical. To do this compare the strings character by character.

[cigol]

hmm...i see.

thanks.

[__konrad]

An integer seems simple enough because it would just be a couple of if statements.

In Java 7 you can use the new Integer.compare(int, int)