How to use Comparator in Java to sort

There are a couple of awkward things with your example class:

  • it’s called People while it has a price and info (more something for objects, not people);
  • when naming a class as a plural of something, it suggests it is an abstraction of more than one thing.

Anyway, here’s a demo of how to use a Comparator<T>:

public class ComparatorDemo {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Person> people = Arrays.asList(
                new Person("Joe", 24),
                new Person("Pete", 18),
                new Person("Chris", 21)
        );
        Collections.sort(people, new LexicographicComparator());
        System.out.println(people);
        Collections.sort(people, new AgeComparator());
        System.out.println(people);
    }
}

class LexicographicComparator implements Comparator<Person> {
    @Override
    public int compare(Person a, Person b) {
        return a.name.compareToIgnoreCase(b.name);
    }
}

class AgeComparator implements Comparator<Person> {
    @Override
    public int compare(Person a, Person b) {
        return a.age < b.age ? -1 : a.age == b.age ? 0 : 1;
    }
}

class Person {

    String name;
    int age;

    Person(String n, int a) {
        name = n;
        age = a;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return String.format("{name=%s, age=%d}", name, age);
    }
}

EDIT

And an equivalent Java 8 demo would look like this:

public class ComparatorDemo {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Person> people = Arrays.asList(
                new Person("Joe", 24),
                new Person("Pete", 18),
                new Person("Chris", 21)
        );
        Collections.sort(people, (a, b) -> a.name.compareToIgnoreCase(b.name));
        System.out.println(people);
        Collections.sort(people, (a, b) -> a.age < b.age ? -1 : a.age == b.age ? 0 : 1);
        System.out.println(people);
    }
}

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