Core Java - Interview Questions and Answers for 'CompareTo' | Search Interview Question

Core Java - Interview Questions and Answers for 'CompareTo' - 6 question(s) found - Order By Newest

Q1. Can we override compareTo method for Enumerations ?

Ans. No. compareTo method is declared final for the Enumerations and hence cannot be overriden. This has been intentionally done so that one cannot temper with the sorting order on the Enumeration which is the order in which Enum constants are declared.

Help us improve. Please let us know the company, where you were asked this question :

_{Like Discuss Correct / Improve java compareto final methods enum enumeration expert}

Q2. How TreeMap orders the elements if the Key is a String ?

Ans. As String implements Comparable, It refers to the String compareTo method to identify the order relationship among those elements.

Help us improve. Please let us know the company, where you were asked this question :

_{Like Discuss Correct / Improve java collections comparable interface treemap compareto}

Q3. How many elements will be there in TreeSet after the last line and Why ?

TreeSet set = new TreeSet();
set .add(new String("abc"));
set .add(new String("abc"));

Core Java

Ans. One.

As we haven't specified the type of TreeSet, it being evaluated with the first element insertion. Once it's identified that it's of type String and as no comparator has been defined, the comparison is done using the String compareTo method. String compareTo method compares the elements by the content / value.

Help us improve. Please let us know the company, where you were asked this question :

_{Like Discuss Correct / Improve java set treeset string compareto coding code}

Q4. If we add Enum constants to a sorted collection ( Treemap , TreeSet ), What will be the order in which they will be maintained ?

a. Sorted Collection wont maintain them in any order.
b. Insertion Order
c. Order in which constants are declared.
d. Natural Sorting Order.

Ans. Order in which constants are declared.

Help us improve. Please let us know the company, where you were asked this question :

_{Like Discuss Correct / Improve enum collections sorted collections treemap treeset compareto comparable java}

Q5. Difference between equals and compareTo in Java ?

Core Java

Ans. "equals" is the method of object class which is supposed to be overridden to check object equality. x.equals(y) means the references x and y are holding objects that are equal.

The compareTo() method is used for comparing two objects in Java. It is usually defined for the classes whose objects needs to be ordered through Comparable interface or need to be part of an ordered collection like TreeSet or TreeMap.

Help us improve. Please let us know the company, where you were asked this question :

_{Like Discuss Correct / Improve equals compareTo equals vs compareTo}

Q6. What is the use of defining equals , compareTo and hashcode methods in a class ? Where are they used ?

Core Java

Ans. equals, compareTo and hashcode are of use when the objects are used within collections.

Equals helps with collections that helps maintaining only unique objects ( like Set )

compare and compareTo helps with collections that helps maintaining objects in order ( TreeSet, TreeMap etc )

hascode helps with collections that facilitates hash searching ( like hashSet, hashMap etc )

Help us improve. Please let us know the company, where you were asked this question :

_{Like Discuss Correct / Improve equals compareTo hashcode method}