/*
* 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.util;
/**
* Comparator is used to compare two objects to determine their ordering in
* respect to each other.
*
* @since 1.2
*/
public interface Comparator<T> {
/**
* Compare the two objects to determine the relative ordering.
*
* @param object1
* an Object to compare
* @param object2
* an Object to compare
* @return an int < 0 if object1 is less than object2, 0 if they are equal,
* and > 0 if object1 is greater
*
* @exception ClassCastException
* when objects are not the correct type
*/
public int compare(T object1, T object2);
/**
* Compares the argument to the receiver, and answers true if they represent
* the <em>same</em> object using a class specific comparison.
*
* @param object
* Object the object to compare with this object.
* @return boolean <code>true</code> if the object is the same as this
* object <code>false</code> if it is different from this object.
* @see Object#hashCode
*/
public boolean equals(Object object);
}
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