comparing strings

[toxicity61284]

hi I need to make a program that gets an array list of names, these names are saved as strings,,, but i need the program to sort and print the names in alphabetical order. My professor told us to use the-
int compareTo(String Str) method, but i do not know how to use it.. any ideas any one??wuwang84@hotmail.com

[reinkesm]

First things first, check out the API at http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2...html#compareTo(java.lang.String)

The documentation explains it pretty well. Basically you do this:

String strABC = new String("ABC");
String strDEF = new String("DEF");
if ( strABC.compareTo(strDEF) == 0 )
{
	System.out.println("ABC is the same as DEF");
}
else if ( strABC.compareTo(strDEF) < 0 )
{
	System.out.println("ABC comes before DEF");
}
else {
	System.out.println("ABC comes after DEF");
}

In this case, "ABC comes before DEF" will print because the compareTo() will return a value less than 0.