String comparison in Java.

Question

What does “compare two strings lexicographically” mean?

Answer 1

A lexicographic comparison is something similar to the ordering that one might find in a dictionary.

Java String class provides the .compareTo() method in order to lexicographically compare Strings. It is used like this “kiwi”.compareTo(“pineapple”) .

The return of this method is an int which can be interpreted as follows:

• returns < 0 

then the string is calling the method that lexicographically comes first

•   returns==0 

then the two strings are lexicographically equivalent

• returns>0

then the parameter passed to the compareTo method is lexicographically first.

The method provides the first non-zero difference in ASCII values.

There is also a variant .compareToIgnoreCase() which will return 0 for “b”.compareToIgnoreCase(“B”);

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