How to sort a List in Java?

Lewis D.

The Problem

You’ve created a List object in your Java project, but some functionality requires the values to be sorted in a specific order. How can you do this?

The Solution

There are several solutions to this problem. Let’s take a look at some of the more common ones.

Using the Collections Class

The java.utils.Collections library provides the method sort(List<T>), which will take an implemented List object and sort it based on the natural order of the value type:

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;

public class Example {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Integer> test = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(8, 6, 3, 7, 2));
        Collections.sort(test);
        for (Integer i : test) {
            System.out.print(i);
        }
    }
}

Output:

23678

If you want to change the ordering of your sort, use the overloaded sort(List<T> list, Comparator<? super T> c) method and provide a comparator:

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

public class Example {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Integer> test = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(8, 6, 3, 7, 2));
        Collections.sort(test, Comparator.reverseOrder());
        for (Integer i : test) {
            System.out.print(i);
        }
    }
}

Output:

87632

Using Comparator with List.sort()

The comparator interface provides the framework to compare different comparable objects.

The List.sort(Comparator<? super T> c) method takes a comparator as an argument, and will return a sorted array based on the comparator order specified:

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Comparator;
import java.util.List;

public class Example {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Integer> test = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(8, 6, 3, 7, 2));
        test.sort(Comparator.naturalOrder());
        for (Integer i : test) {
            System.out.print(i);
        }
    }
}

Output:

23678

This method in the List class is practically identical to the Collections class implementation, and so the order can be changed with whatever comparator it receives as an argument.

Using a Stream Object

You can also use the List.stream() method to sort your list. This method will return a sequential Stream object containing the values from the list. You can then use the Stream.sorted(Comparator<? super T> c) method to order your list based on a provided comparator. You will then need to convert the Stream object back into a List.

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

public class Example {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Integer> test = new ArrayList<>(Arrays.asList(8, 6, 3, 7, 2));
        test = test.stream()
                .sorted(Comparator.naturalOrder())
                .collect(Collectors.toList());
        for (Integer i : test) {
            System.out.print(i);
        }
    }
}

Output:

23678

These methods all behave in a similar way, and they are mostly interchangeable.

All three implement a version of a merge sort and have an average time complexity of O(n*Log n).