Sorting types - which is faster?

[Angela Truce]

Hello,

this is just out of general interest to find out if anyone knows if there is any speed difference between sorting doubles and integers? Technically you could pass an integer as a double but if you treat the integer as a double does this decrease the speed in anyway because it has to sort the numbers after the period?

I am basing my assumption that you use the compareTo method.

thanks.
[ August 12, 2006: Message edited by: Angela Truce ]

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

compareTo() can only compare objects; therefore we might be talking about Integers and Doubles, but not ints and doubles. The best way to sort arrays of genuine ints or doubles would be the sort() methods in the java.util.Arrays class.

Which would be faster? It really depends on the underlying hardware, but in general, you shouldn't see much of a difference.

Note that converting between int and double is not free, and probably much slower than any time difference between comparing instances of the two types.