Arrays.sort()

The class Arrays contains many sorting methods that you can use instead of writing your own. The class is part of the java.util package. The sorting methods use algorithms that are more sophisticated than the simple sorts described above and so are much faster.

Here are some of the sorting methods from Arrays. All of them sort their array into ascending order:

static void sort(byte[] a) 
     
static void sort(char[] a) 
     
static void sort(double[] a)

static void sort(float[] a)

static void sort(int[] a)  
    
static void sort(long[] a) 
     
static void sort(Object[] a)  
    
static void sort(short[] a)      

Here is a program that sorts an array of int

import java.util.*;

public class ArraySortTester
{
  public static void main ( String[] args )
  {
    int[] values = { 17, 5, 21, 8, 19, 2, 23, 15, 4, 13 };
    
    // print out the array
    System.out.println("initial values: "); 
    for ( int val : values )
      System.out.print( val + ", " ); 
     
    // sort the array
    Arrays.sort( values );  // NOTE
  
    // print out the array
    System.out.println("\n\nsorted values: "); 
    for ( int val : values )
      System.out.print( val + ", " ); 
    System.out.println( );
   }
}

Here is a run of the program:

C:\JavaSource>java  ArraySortTester
initial values:
17, 5, 21, 8, 19, 2, 23, 15, 4, 13,

sorted values:
2, 4, 5, 8, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23,