What is the CharBuffer compareTo() method in Java?

java.nio.CharBuffer is a class that we can use to store a buffer of characters. The compareTo() method of the class java.nio.CharBuffer compares two buffers. Two buffers are compared by comparing their sequence of remaining elements lexicographically, without regard to the starting point of the buffers.

Note:

Two characters are compared the same way as the Char.compare() method. The only difference is that unlike Char.compare(), -0 and +0 are considered equal by the CompareBuffer.compareTo() method.

Declaration

The CharBuffer.compareTo() method can be declared as:

buff1.compareTo(buff2);

buff1: The first buffer, to be compared to buff2.
buff2: The second buffer, to be compared to buff1.

Return value

The CharBuffer.compareTo() method returns an integer such that:

The return value is a positive integer if buff1 is greater than buff2.
The return value is 0 if buff1 is equal to buff2.
The return value is a negative integer if buff1 is less than buff2.

Examples

Example 1

Consider the code snippet below, which demonstrates the use of the CharBuffer.compareTo() method.

import java.nio.*;
import java.util.*;
public class main {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      int n1 = 5;
      int n2 = 4;
      try {
         CharBuffer buff1 = CharBuffer.allocate(n1);
         buff1.put('a');
         buff1.put('c');
         System.out.println("buff1: " + Arrays.toString(buff1.array()));
         
         CharBuffer buff2 = CharBuffer.allocate(n2);
         buff2.put('a');
         buff2.put('c');
         System.out.println("buff2: " + Arrays.toString(buff2.array()));
         
         int foo = buff1.compareTo(buff2);
         System.out.println("\nbuff1 compareTo to buff2: " + foo);
         
      } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
         System.out.println("Error!!! IllegalArgumentException");
      } catch (ReadOnlyBufferException e) {
         System.out.println("Error!!! ReadOnlyBufferException");
      }
   }
}

import java.nio.*;
import java.util.*;
public class main {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      int n1 = 4;
      int n2 = 4;
      try {
         CharBuffer buff1 = CharBuffer.allocate(n1);
         buff1.put('a');
         buff1.put('c');
         System.out.println("buff1: " + Arrays.toString(buff1.array()));
         
         CharBuffer buff2 = CharBuffer.allocate(n2);
         buff2.put('b');
         buff2.put('c');
         System.out.println("buff2: " + Arrays.toString(buff2.array()));
         
         int foo = buff1.compareTo(buff2);
         System.out.println("\nbuff1 compareTo to buff2: " + foo);
         
      } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
         System.out.println("Error!!! IllegalArgumentException");
      } catch (ReadOnlyBufferException e) {
         System.out.println("Error!!! ReadOnlyBufferException");
      }
   }
}

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