Java comparesto, How does it work?

Umekichi

Hi there,
I have (yet another!) question in Java. I am currently doing an exercise in Strings and my issue is with compares to.

Essentially the exercise is this:

Given the following code that prints, “0”:          
1. Modify the string(s) so that a value greater than 0 is printed,
and explain why this happens.    
2. Modify the string(s) so that a value less than 0 is printed, and
explain why this happens.

This is the code I have:

public class Ex_3_4 {

public static void main(String[] args) {
String eggs1 = "Cackle fruit";
String eggs2 = "Cackle fruit";

System.out.println(eggs1.compareTo(eggs2));//0

eggs1 = "Cackles fruit";
System.out.println(eggs1.compareTo(eggs2));//83

eggs1 = "Cackle frui";
System.out.println(eggs1.compareTo(eggs2));//-1

}

}

what I want to know is, why am I getting the values 83 and -1?

lynchie

Javadoc for string explains the return values for compareTo inside Comparable. As to the reason for the exact return value look at the source inside String.java