K&B book (mutually comparable)

[Pawanpreet Singh]

It is mentioned on page 556(exam watch) in K&B book, about sorting of collection and arrays, the elements should be mutuable comparable.
What does this mean, i have created an object of Car and stored all same object of it into Object[].

In class Car, i have not implemented any Comparable, or not a separate class with Comparator. Hence when i try to
call Array.sort(objects).. it gives ClassCastException.

But when i implement one a Comparable interface, it works fine, does it mean that "if two objects elements are said to be mutually comparable in a collection (TreeSet) or in an array (Object[]), if they implement Comparable interface".

Also same is case of TreeSet (sorted/ordered set)

[Keith Lynn]

Yes, that is the case.

You can understand the reason if you think about the key element in any sort algorithm, the ability to compare elements to see if their positions should be swapped.

When a class definition implements Comparable, objects created from the class definition are Comparable objects.
[ August 01, 2006: Message edited by: Keith Lynn ]