Compare Comparable and Comparator Inteface?
For object type, if you want to sort the elements in a collection, you need to provide a comparator. There are two way to provide comparator for collection : Comparable and Comparator interface.
Here is some different point between Comparable and Comparator interface:
|
Comparable |
Comparator |
| Comparable provides only one way of comparison. That is, we can only compare by id or name, or age, … | Comparable provides a variety of comparisons. That is, we can sort based on many factors such as id, name, age, … |
| Comparable modifies the original class, that is, the comparable object’s class must modify and implement the Comparable Interface to implement. | Comparator does not change the original class. We can create a new class that implements the Comparator Interface to implement. |
| Comparable provides compareTo() method to compare two elements. | Comparator provides compare() method to compare two elements. |
| Any list can be sorted using the Collections.sort(List) method . | Any list can be sorted using the Collections.sort(List, Comparator) method |
