What is the Range.elementCompareTo() method in Java?

Overview

The elementCompareTo() method is an instance method of the Range that checks the occurrence of the specified element relative to the range. The method returns:

  • -1 if the element occurs before the range.
  • 0 if the element occurs within the range.
  • 1 if the element occurs after the range.

How to import

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 as follows:


import org.apache.commons.lang3.Range;

Syntax


public int elementCompareTo(final T element)

Parameters

  • final T element: The element to check.

Return value

This method returns +1, 0, or -1 based on the element’s location relative to the range.

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.elementCompareTo(%s) = %s", range, element, range.elementCompareTo(element));
System.out.println();
// Example 2
element = 55;
System.out.printf("%s.elementCompareTo(%s) = %s", range, element, range.elementCompareTo(element));
System.out.println();
// Example 3
element = 300;
System.out.printf("%s.elementCompareTo(%s) = %s", range, element, range.elementCompareTo(element));
}
}

Example 1

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

The method returns 0 as the element occurs within the range.

Example 2

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

The method returns -1 as the element occurs before the range.

Example 3

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

The method returns 1 as the element occurs after the range.

Output

The output of the code will be as follows:


[100..200].elementCompareTo(150) = 0
[100..200].elementCompareTo(55) = -1
[100..200].elementCompareTo(300) = 1

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