{"id":10661,"date":"2020-09-30T00:23:21","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T18:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/?p=10661"},"modified":"2021-01-11T18:27:33","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T12:57:33","slug":"compare-characters-java","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/compare-characters-java\/","title":{"rendered":"How to compare characters in Java"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In this article, we are going to compare characters in Java.<br \/>\nJava provides some built-in methods such <code>compare()<\/code> and <code>equals()<\/code> to compare the character objects. Although, we can use less than or greater than operators but they work well with primitive values only.<br \/>\n<div id=\"toc_container\" class=\"toc_light_blue no_bullets\"><p class=\"toc_title\">Table of Contents<\/p><ul class=\"toc_list\"><li><a href=\"#Compare_primitive_chars\">Compare primitive chars<\/a><ul><li><a href=\"#Using_compare\">Using compare()<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#Using_relation_operators\">Using relation operators<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><a href=\"#Compare_Character_objects\">Compare Character objects<\/a><ul><li><a href=\"#Using_compare-2\">Using compare()<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#Using_Equals\">Using Equals()<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\nLet&#8217;s take some examples to compare characters in Java. <\/p>\n<h2><span id=\"Compare_primitive_chars\">Compare primitive chars<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>You can compare primitive chars either using <code>Character.compare()<\/code> method or <code>&lt;, &gt; or =<\/code> relational operators.<\/p>\n<h3><span id=\"Using_compare\">Using compare()<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>The <code>compare()<\/code> method of Characters class returns a numeric value positive, negative or zero.<br \/>\nSee the example below.<\/p>\n<pre code=\"java\">\nclass Main {\n\n    public static void main(String[] args){\n\n        char a = 'a';\n        char b = 'b';\n        if(Character.compare(a, b) > 0) {\n            System.out.println(\"a is greater\");\n        }else if(Character.compare(a, b) < 0) {\n            System.out.println(\"a is less than b\");\n        }else \n            System.out.println(\"Both are equal\");\n    }\n}\n<\/pre>\n<p>Output<\/p>\n<div class=\"content-box-green\">\na is less than b\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"su-note\"  style=\"border-color:#dbdddd;border-radius:3px;-moz-border-radius:3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;\"><div class=\"su-note-inner su-u-clearfix su-u-trim\" style=\"background-color:#f5f7f7;border-color:#ffffff;color:#333333;border-radius:3px;-moz-border-radius:3px;-webkit-border-radius:3px;\">\n<div class=\"su-list\" style=\"margin-left:0px\">\n<strong class=\"notefr\">Recommended read<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i class=\"sui sui-check\" style=\"color:#333\"><\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/find-duplicate-characters-in-string-java\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Find duplicate characters in String<\/a><\/li>\n<li><i class=\"sui sui-check\" style=\"color:#333\"><\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/add-character-to-string-java\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Add character to String in java<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<h3><span id=\"Using_relation_operators\">Using relation operators<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>We can use relational operators like less than or greater than to compare two characters in Java. It is simplest approach and does not involve any class or method.<\/p>\n<pre code=\"java\">\nclass Main {\n\n    public static void main(String[] args){\n\n        char a = 'a';\n        char b = 'b';\n        if(a > b) {\n            System.out.println(\"a is greater\");\n        }else if(a < b) {\n            System.out.println(\"a is less than b\");\n        }else \n            System.out.println(\"Both are equal\");\n    }\n}\n<\/pre>\n<p>Output<\/p>\n<div class=\"content-box-green\">\na is less than b\n<\/div>\n<h2><span id=\"Compare_Character_objects\">Compare Character objects<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>You can compare primitive chars either using <code>Character.compare()<\/code> method or <code>equals()<\/code> method.<\/p>\n<h3><span id=\"Using_compare-2\">Using compare()<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>You can use <code>compare()<\/code> method with Character objects as well. The <code>compare()<\/code> method of Characters class returns a numeric value positive, negative or zero.<br \/>\nSee the example below.<\/p>\n<pre code=\"java\">\nclass Main {\n\n    public static void main(String[] args){\n\n        Character ch1 = 'x';\n        Character ch2 = 'y';\n        if(Character.compare(ch1, ch2) > 0) {\n            System.out.println(\"x is greater\");\n        }else if(Character.compare(ch1, ch2) < 0) {\n            System.out.println(\"x is less than y\");\n        }else \n            System.out.println(\"Both are equal\");\n    }\n}\n<\/pre>\n<p>Output<\/p>\n<div class=\"content-box-green\">\nx is less than y\n<\/div>\n<h3><span id=\"Using_Equals\">Using Equals()<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>The <code>equals()<\/code> method is used to check whether two char objects are equal or not. It returns <code>true<\/code> if both are equal else returns <code>false<\/code>.<\/p>\n<pre code=\"java\">\nclass Main {\n\n    public static void main(String[] args){\n\n        Character a = 'a';\n        Character b = 'b';\n\n        if(a.equals(b)) {\n            System.out.println(\"a is equals b\");\n        }else \n            System.out.println(\"a is not equal to b\");\n    }\n}\n<\/pre>\n<p>Output<\/p>\n<div class=\"content-box-green\">\na is not equal to b\n<\/div>\n<p>That's all about How to compare characters in Java.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learn about how to compare characters in java using different methods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10661"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/java2blog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}