Java Arrays sort(char[] a) method example

java.util.Arrays sort(char[] a)

Description

On this document we will be showing a java example on how to use the sort(char[] a) method of Arrays Class. Basically the sort(char[] a) method sorts the specified array into ascending numerical order. The sort() method is overloaded in such a way that each primitive data type is handled. On this example we will be showing the sorting of characters.

Notes:

The sorting algorithm is a Dual-Pivot Quicksort by Vladimir Yaroslavskiy, Jon Bentley, and Joshua Bloch. This algorithm offers O(n log(n)) performance on many data sets that cause other quicksorts to degrade to quadratic performance, and is typically faster than traditional (one-pivot) Quicksort implementations.
This method will yield the same result as sort(bytes[] a, int fromIndex, int toIndex) method on such cases that the fromIndex is 0 and endIndex is equal to length. In short Arrays.sort(byte[] a) is equals to Arrays.sort(byte[] a, 0,a.length).

Method Syntax

public static void sort(char[] a)

Method Argument

Data Type	Parameter	Description
char[]	a	the array to be sorted

Method Returns

The sort(char[] a) method returns void.

Compatibility

Requires Java 1.2 and up

Java Arrays sort(char[] a) Example

Below is a java code demonstrates the use of sort(char[] a) method of Arrays class. The example presented might be simple however it shows the behavior of the sort(char[] a) method.

package com.javatutorialhq.java.examples;

import java.util.Arrays;

/*
 * A java example source code to demonstrate
 * the use of sort(byte[] a) method of Arrays class
 */

public class ArraysSortCharExample {

	public static void main(String[] args) {

		// initialize a new char array
		char[] a = new char[]{'z','b','B','w','x','e'};
		
		// print the contents of array of characters
		System.out.println("Original:"+Arrays.toString(a));
		
		// sort our array of characters in ascending order
		Arrays.sort(a);
		
		// print the sorted array of char
		System.out.println("Sorted:"+Arrays.toString(a));

	}
}

The above java example source code demonstrates the use of sort(char[] a) method of Arrays class. We simply declare a new char array and we printed the values using the toString() method of Arrays class. Then we sorted the char array using the sort() method and the sorted values were also printed the same way as what we did on the original/unsorted array.

Sample Output

Below is the sample output when you run the above example.

References

Oracle Java Documentation