Reputation: 9336

Compare Strings as if they were numbers

I was wondering if it is possible to compare strings as if they were numbers. For instance is there any way you could make it so that "Cat" > "Dog"

Upvotes: 4

Answers (7)

Fred Foo

Reputation: 363818

You can't. This would require operator overloading, which Java won't let you.

Upvotes: 1

404 Not Found

Reputation: 3665

Since the only way to do this is to keep a set value for each word, you'd be using arrays, or some other form of data storage.

Here is an example where you just keep the words, and their corresponding values in two arrays (note, they must be in the same order, so the first word corresponds with the first number, etc).

public static String[] words = {"cat","dog","banana"};
public static int[] value = {3,4,5};
public static void main(String[] args){
    if(valOf("Cat") > valOf("Dog")){
        System.out.print("Cat is greater than Dog");
    }
    else{
        System.out.print("Cat is not greater than Dog");
    }
}
public static int valOf(String str){
    for(int x=0;x<words.length;x++){
        if(str.equalsIgnoreCase(words[x])){
            return value[x];
        }
    }
    return -1;
}

Upvotes: -1

moinudin

Reputation: 138497

You can't use operators (e.g. "Cat" < "Dog") as you suggest. As @larsmans says that would require operator overloading which Java doesn't provide. However, you can still compare strings using "Cat".compareTo("Dog") which returns 0 if the strings are equal, a number greater than 0 if "Cat" is lexicographically less than "Dog", or a negative number otherwise.

See this page

Upvotes: 5

fastcodejava

Reputation: 41127

You need to use some method as below :

int compare(String s1, String s2);   // write code to do comparison.

Upvotes: 0

Jim Tough

Reputation: 15239

Just implement the Comparator interface and implement the comparison any way you like.

Here is the Javadoc

Upvotes: 4

akf

Reputation: 39505

You can use the compareTo method in String

Upvotes: 0

Compare Strings as if they were numbers

Answers (7)

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