What is Range.isBefore() in Java?

Overview

isBefore() is an instance method of the Range class that is used to check whether the given range is before the specified element or not.

How to import Range

The definition of Range can be found in the Apache Commons Lang package, which we can add to the Maven project by adding the following dependency to the pom.xml file:

<dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
            <version>3.12.0</version>
</dependency>

For other versions of the commons-lang package, refer to the Maven Repository.

You can import the Range class with the following command:

import org.apache.commons.lang3.Range;

Syntax

public boolean isBefore(final T element)

Parameters

  • final T element: The element to check.

Return value

The isBefore() method returns true if the range is entirely before the specified element. Otherwise, it returns false.

Code

import org.apache.commons.lang3.Range;
public class Main{
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int fromValue = 100;
        int toValue = 200;
        Range<Integer> range = Range.between(fromValue, toValue);
        // Example 1
        int element = 150;
        System.out.printf("%s.isBefore(%s) = %s", range, element, range.isBefore(element));
        System.out.println();
        // Example 2
        element = 55;
        System.out.printf("%s.isBefore(%s) = %s", range, element, range.isBefore(element));
        System.out.println();
        // Example 3
        element = 300;
        System.out.printf("%s.isBefore(%s) = %s", range, element, range.isBefore(element));
    }
}

Explanation

Example 1

  • range = [100..200]
  • element = 150

The method returns false because the entire range is not before the element.

Example 2

  • range = [100..200]
  • element = 55

The method returns false because the entire range is not before the element.

Example 3

  • range = [100..200]
  • element = 300

The method returns true because the entire range is before the element.

Output

The output of the code will be as follows:

[100..200].isBefore(150) = false
[100..200].isBefore(55) = false
[100..200].isBefore(300) = true
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