SortNames woes...

Except for the first assignment when I was cutting my teeth and SayB, I've really enjoyed the challenge of the Cattle Drive. Now I'm really stumped!

As you can tell, I'm on the SortNames assignment. I'm befuddled (read.. I really don't get it) about the extravagence of using an interface in this exercise.

To avoid repeating a bad idea, I will not indicate what solution I suggested to Marilyn in my email to her. She refered me to this discussion forum.

I got the exercise to work, sorting by first name. I used ArrayList and Collections to get to the output (First / Last)I needed. The last name sort solution still eludes me.

I did research in this forum to see if I could glean any hints on what to do, but it was all to no avail!

I dont't understand

what advantage an interface has, and, once I have the interface, what benifit it will bring. Please help!

The last name sort solution still eludes me.

Sun tutorial on Object Ordering might give you some ideas.

I dont't understand what advantage an interface has, and, once I have the interface, what benifit it will bring. Please help!

It's been a while since I've thought about the SortNames assignment, but maybe I can help at a real general level...

An interface usually gives you the advantage of letting you add some functionality to your class that it might not otherwise have. In this case, you need to sort by last names. Before you can sort a bunch of names, though, you need to be able to compare those names to eachother. That's where a certain interface might come in handy.

If that's altogether too vague, please say so. I think I remember some helpful conversations on this one, I'll try to dig them up...

Hang in there!
[ March 15, 2005: Message edited by: Pauline McNamara ]

Here's one favorite on SortNames. There's a bunch of good ones out there - a quick search using 'sort names' got 'em.

Are you having fun yet?

[PM]: An interface usually gives you the advantage of letting you add some functionality to your class that it might not otherwise have.

You might add the functionality to an existing class, or you might just create a brand new class that implements the interface. Interfaces are very flexible in this respect.

Marcus,
Check this thread in beginners for an example.

Here's a ditty I wrote a few years ago: http://www.javaranch.com/CodeBarn/shapes.jsp

Interfaces allows you to code a class that won't know or doesn't care what the actual implementation class is.

So you have a

Person interface with a name and one method getName()

Now you have a Pauline, Mark, Paul, and Jim class, each of which implement the Person interface.

So if I have a class called Invitation with a method called sendInvite(Person p)

this method can call p.getName() without caring whether it is Paul, Pauline, Mark, or Jim.

Interfaces are very powerful and help open the big world of Design Patterns.

Mark

Here's a link to one of my posts from back when I was working through this assignment: http://www.coderanch.com/t/4169/Cattle-Drive/Sorting-it-out
You are not alone!
[ March 18, 2005: Message edited by: Carol Murphy ]

Thanks,

Now that I have my machine running again (BIOS upgrade), I'll take a look at it.

Seems to me that others have needed help too! I"m so glad. Sometimes I feel so dumb!