Difference Between Comparable And Comperator In Java In Tabular Form

In Java, there are two interfaces that provides a way to sort and compare objects, namely Comparable and Comparator. Both interfaces play significant roles in sorting and ordering elements, but they differ in when it comes to identify ordering of elements.

The classes that implements Comparable interface support default natural sorting, if one needs to implement a customized sorting order then Comperator comes into picture. Further, the classes which doesn’t implement Comparable interface and required a need to support for sorting, then Comparator can also be used in such case.

For user-defined classes, Comparator can be used for sorting objects based on some values as a base for determining order of elements.

Point to Remember:

1. Comparable is for default natural sorting, on other hand, Comparator is for custom sorting

2. Comparable resides in java.lang package, whereas, Comparator comes under java.util package

3. Comparable interface consists only single method, named compareTo(), while Comparator contains 2 method, named equals() and compare()
4. All wrapper classess & String implements Comparable interface, whereas, Collator or RuleBaseCollator are two classes that directly implement Comparator .

Comparable

Comparable is an interface that empowers natural sorting of elements. A class that implements the Comparable interface defines compareTo() method, which takes class type object and returns an integer indicating the relative order of the elements.

Comparator

Comparator, on the other hand, is an interface that empowers custom sorting of elements. Unlike Comparable, which only supports natural order of elements. A Comparator can be defined and used independently with class. It can also be passed as a parameter to a Collections.sort() method or used to sort elements stored in a collection that implements the SortedSet or SortedMap interfaces.