Help Please

[Victoria Preston]

I need to add a name to an array but I have to make add it in alphabetical order. I got the add part down its how to do it in aphabetical order. Any help would be apprecated

[Jeff Albertson]

Does it have to be an array? What about a SortedSet?

[Victoria Preston]

It has to be an array....I already have an array of names and I am suppose to be able too add names to get and when I add them I am suppose to do it alphabetically

[Keith Lynn]

You could put the array in a sorted collection, add the element, and then turn the collection into an array.

[Jeff Albertson]

Is this an assignment?

[Victoria Preston]

m I reading that right...is a sortedSet an intereface...if so I can noy use it...I have to right everything...I can not use plugs...if I could believe me I wouldhave used array lists for this project

[Victoria Preston]

I do have a compareTo method that I wrote that I can use but I just don't know how to go about doing so.

[Keith Lynn]

When you need to add a new element to the array, create a second array, copy the contents of the original into it, and add the new element into it. Then you could use a sorting algorithm to sort the array.

[Victoria Preston]

Yes this is an assigment....a small part of it

[Chris Stehno]

You could also use <code>java.util.Arrays.sort(Object[] array)</code> to sort the array when ever you need it to be correctly ordered -- this assumes that your objects in the array are Comparable or that you use the version of the method that also takes a Comparator.

Hope this helps.

[Victoria Preston]

when you say a sorting alogithm do you mean a for loop of some kind

[Keith Lynn]

Actually, I guess a more efficient way to do it would be since the first array is by definition sorted, you could create the second array, and copy the elements from the first array into it as long as the elements are "less than" what you want to add. When you get to the first element in the original array that is "greater than" what you want to add, then add your element to the new array, and then copy the remainder from the original array into the new one.

[Garrett Rowe]

With those requirement I would do something like this:

while I'm not done
   starting from the beginning of the array
   if the element at the current position is less than the new element
      increment ahead one position
   else if the current position is greater than the new element
      move every element from this postion to the end up one unit
      insert the element into the current position
      now I'm done

Garrett

[Victoria Preston]

since I have a compareTo() method can't I just start with a for loop...like so

for(int i=0; i<list.length; i++)
{
CODE HERE somehow using the comapre to method I have
}