How to sort a Set

[Pramod Kumar]

I need to sort a Set how can I do that.

Thanks.

[Peter Chase]

The short answer, is "you can't". A Set is not an ordered Collection.

A longer, and hopefully more useful, answer is that there are a variety of ways that you can get a sorted version of the information that is in a Set.

You could do toArray() on the Set, then Arrays.sort().

You could switch from a Set to a SortedSet such as TreeSet.

You could switch from a Set to a List like ArrayList and use Collections.sort().

There are a variety of reasons for choosing different options. For example, if you need the no-duplicates feature of a Set, then ArrayList is no good.
[ November 01, 2007: Message edited by: Peter Chase ]