如何按数组中字符串的长度对 ArrayList 进行排序

Question

I've recently begun taking a Computer Science course to understand programming more and seem to have hit a roadblock with our lab on ArrayLists. The purpose of the program is to put x amount of strings into an ArrayList and then output the results in descending order.

Ex:Zebra, Deer, Giraffe Deer

Result:Giraffe, Zebra, Deer

I've looked around online and found a few examples using ArrayList comparators but our professor wants us to do it by filtering out the largest word, printing it, removing it and then continue that loop until all words are printed out.

Here is my code so far:

public static void main(String[] args) {

    Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
    int length = 0;
    String longest = "";
    String currentWord = "";
    ArrayList <String> DescendArray = new ArrayList<String>();
    System.out.println("What would you like to add to the list?");
    String userInput = input.next();
    while(!userInput.equals("d"))
    {
        DescendArray.add(userInput);
        userInput = input.next();
    }
    for (int i=0; i < DescendArray.size(); i++)
    {
        if (DescendArray.get(i).length() > longest.length())
                {
                    currentWord = DescendArray.get(i);
                    if (currentWord.length() > longest.length())
                    {
                        longest = currentWord;
                        length = longest.length();
                    }
                }
        for (int j=1; j < DescendArray.size() -1 ; j++)
        {
            if (DescendArray.get(j - 1).length() > longest.length())
            {
                DescendArray.remove(j - 1);
            }
            System.out.println(longest + " " + length);
        }
    }
}

}

I'm assuming my error is somewhere in the inner loop but I can't seem to get it to work no matter how many different variations I use.

Answer 1

This is basically what you gotta do:

public class Zoo {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<String> zoo = new ArrayList<String>();
        zoo.add("Zebra");
        zoo.add("Deer");
        zoo.add("Giraffe");
        zoo.add("Deer");
        while(!zoo.isEmpty()) {
            String bigger = "";
            for(String animal : zoo) {
                if(animal.length() > bigger.length()) {
                    bigger = animal;
                }
            }
            System.out.println(bigger);
            while(zoo.contains(bigger)) {
                zoo.remove(bigger);
            }
        }
    }

}

Answer 2

Try this, it works for me.

     List<String> sorted = list.stream()
                .sorted(Comparator.comparingInt(String::length))
                .collect(Collectors.toList());

Answer 3

This seems to work. If you don't want to remove repeating animals then remove distinct() method. I omitted creation of the list.

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;

public class Zoo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<String> zoo = Arrays.asList("Zebra", "Deer", "Giraffe", "Deer");
        String output = zoo.stream()
                           .distinct()
                           .sorted((x, y) -> Integer.compare(y.length(), x.length()))
                           .collect(Collectors.joining(","));
        System.out.println(output);
    }
}

Answer 4

I'm amazed at the verbosity of other solutions. A much simpler method would be to use a stream:

List<String> original = Arrays.asList("s1", "String 2", "ss3", "s");
List<String> sorted = original.stream()
        .sorted((s1, s2) -> s2.length() - s1.length())
        .collect(Collectors.toList());
System.out.println(sorted);

Replace "original" with your ArrayList.

Answer 5

Under the assumption that duplicate words need not be removed at the same time, such that a duplicate word will be removed in order, and that the list need not be done in alphabetical order (one could sort the list first), and that thread safety is not important, I would avoid using the integer counters and checking the size. Instead, I would run the output loop until everything has been removed.

As an example:

public void doRemove()
{
    while (! descendArray.isEmpty()) {
        String longest = "";

        for (String s : descendArray) {
            if (s.length() > longest.length()) {
                longest = s;
            }
        }

        if (longest.length() > 0) {
            if (descendArray.remove(longest)) {
                System.out.println(longest + " (" + longest.length() + ")");
            }
        }
    } // while we stil have things to process
}

Answer 6

The problem seems to be that for each iteration in your for loop, you arrive at Giraffe as your longest word, then you're checking the rest of the list to see if it is longer than Giraffe. Instead of what you have now, I would write something like:

for (int i=0; i < DescendArray.size(); i++)
{
    longest = "";
    length = longest.length();
    int longestIndex = 0;
    for (int j=1; j < DescendArray.size() -1 ; j++)
    {
        currentWord = DescendArray.get(j);
        if (currentWord.length() > longest.length())
        {
            longestIndex = j;
            longest = currentWord;
            length = longest.length();
        }
    }
    DescendArray.remove(longestIndex);
    System.out.println(longest + " " + length);
}

This nested for loop should find the longest word first, store the index and print and remove the entry at that index before it finds the next longest entry.

Answer 7

When you say descending order are you referring to the length of the string or an alphabetical comparison?

Check out how the QuickSort algorithm can be used for string sorting. You can find information on QuickSort here

Answer 8

Here is another variation which can be used, but involves an extra array list:

ArrayList<String> DescendArray = new ArrayList<>();
DescendArray.add("Monkey");
DescendArray.add("Giraffe");
DescendArray.add("Hippo");
DescendArray.add("Zebra");
DescendArray.add("Monkey");

List<String> copy = new ArrayList<>(DescendArray);

for (int i=0; i<DescendArray.size(); i++) {
    String longest = "";
    for (int j=0; j<copy.size(); j++) {
        String current = copy.get(j);
        if (current.length() > longest.length()) {
             longest = current;
        }
    }
    System.out.println(longest);
    while(copy.contains(longest)) {
        copy.remove(longest);
    }        
}

Answer 9

When you need to remove element from the list, iterator is a better way. See below for the code.

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Comparator;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;

public class Zoo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<String> zoo = new ArrayList<String>();
        zoo.add("Zebra");
        zoo.add("Deer");
        zoo.add("Giraffe");
        zoo.add("Deer");
        Collections.sort(zoo,new Comparator<String>() {
            @Override
            public int compare(String o1, String o2) {          
                return o2.compareTo(o1);
            }
        });
        Iterator<String> iterator=zoo.iterator();
        while (iterator.hasNext()) {
            System.out.println(iterator.next());
            iterator.remove();
        }
    }
}

Answer 10

To sort an ArrayList based on it's each String length, you can try:

private ArrayList SortwithStrlength(ArrayList templist) {
        for(int i=0;i<templist.size();i++)
        {
            for(int j=0;j<templist.size();j++)
            {
                String temp;
                if(templist.get(i).toString().length()<templist.get(j).toString().length())
                {
                    temp=templist.get(i).toString();
                    templist.set(i, templist.get(j).toString());
                    templist.set(j,temp);
                }
            }
        }
        return templist;
    }