Recently while working for my project, I came across this situation when I had a 2-D array and I needed to sort it twice on 2 of its columns. Consider the following 2D array:
Sorting the above 2D array on zero column will give
{
{"1", "2", "6"},
{"4", "5", "3"}
}
{"1", "2", "6"},
{"4", "5", "3"}
}
whereas sorting it on second column will give
{
{"4", "5", "3"},
{"1", "2", "6"}
}
{"4", "5", "3"},
{"1", "2", "6"}
}
I did not want to do the most common as well as tedious thing, i.e. write my own sorting function like this:
public void myOwnSort(String [][] exampleArray) {
//code for sorting the array according to my wish.
}
//code for sorting the array according to my wish.
}
I wanted to avoid this for 2 resons:
- I would have to write the code for it ( lazy me!!).
- Secondly, I can possibly never match the efficiency provided by the sorting functions of java.util.Arrays