| /* |
| * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more |
| * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with |
| * this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. |
| * The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 |
| * (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with |
| * the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at |
| * |
| * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 |
| * |
| * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software |
| * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, |
| * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. |
| * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and |
| * limitations under the License. |
| */ |
| |
| package java.lang; |
| |
| /** |
| * This interface should be implemented by all classes that wish to define a |
| * <em>natural order</em> of their instances. |
| * {@link java.util.Collections#sort} and {@code java.util.Arrays#sort} can then |
| * be used to automatically sort lists of classes that implement this interface. |
| * <p> |
| * The order rule must be both transitive (if {@code x.compareTo(y) < 0} and |
| * {@code y.compareTo(z) < 0}, then {@code x.compareTo(z) < 0} must hold) and |
| * invertible (the sign of the result of x.compareTo(y) must be equal to the |
| * negation of the sign of the result of y.compareTo(x) for all combinations of |
| * x and y). |
| * <p> |
| * In addition, it is recommended (but not required) that if and only if the |
| * result of x.compareTo(y) is zero, then the result of x.equals(y) should be |
| * {@code true}. |
| */ |
| public interface Comparable<T> { |
| |
| /** |
| * Compares this object to the specified object to determine their relative |
| * order. |
| * |
| * @param another |
| * the object to compare to this instance. |
| * @return a negative integer if this instance is less than {@code another}; |
| * a positive integer if this instance is greater than |
| * {@code another}; 0 if this instance has the same order as |
| * {@code another}. |
| * @throws ClassCastException |
| * if {@code another} cannot be converted into something |
| * comparable to {@code this} instance. |
| */ |
| int compareTo(T another); |
| } |
