How to compare elements in a collection using Java

Problem Description

How to compare elements in a collection?

Solution

Following example compares the element of a collection by converting a string into a treeset using Collection.min() and Collection.max() methods of Collection class.

import java.util.Collections; 
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.TreeSet;

public class MainClass {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      String[] coins = { "Penny", "nickel", "dime", "Quarter", "dollar" };
      Set set = new TreeSet();
      
      for (int i = 0; i < coins.length; i++)set.add(coins[i]);
      System.out.println(Collections.min(set));
      System.out.println(Collections.min(set, String.CASE_INSENSITIVE_ORDER));
      
      for(int i = 0; i <= 10; i++)System.out.print('-');
      System.out.println(Collections.max(set));
      System.out.println(Collections.max(set, 
      String.CASE_INSENSITIVE_ORDER));
   }
}

Result

The above code sample will produce the following result.

Penny
dime
----------
nickle
Quarter