net.sf.saxon.sort
Interface StringCollator

All Superinterfaces:

Serializable

All Known Subinterfaces:

SubstringMatcher

All Known Implementing Classes:

AlphanumericCollator, CodepointCollator, LowercaseFirstCollator, NamedCollation, RuleBasedSubstringMatcher, UppercaseFirstCollator

public interface StringCollator
extends Serializable

This interface represents a "collation" as defined in XPath, that is, a set of rules for comparing strings

Method Summary

boolean	comparesEqual(String s1, String s2) Compare two strings for equality.
int	compareStrings(String o1, String o2) Compare two strings
Object	getCollationKey(String s) Get a collation key for two Strings.

Method Detail

compareStrings

int compareStrings(String o1,
                   String o2)

Compare two strings

Parameters:

o1 - the first string

o2 - the second string

Returns:

0 if the strings are considered equal, a negative integer if the first string is less than the second, a positive integer if the first string is greater than the second

comparesEqual

boolean comparesEqual(String s1,
                      String s2)

Compare two strings for equality. This may be more efficient than using compareStrings and testing whether the result is zero, but it must give the same result

Parameters:

s1 - the first string

s2 - the second string

Returns:

true if and only if the strings are considered equal,

getCollationKey

Object getCollationKey(String s)

Get a collation key for two Strings. The essential property of collation keys is that if two values are equal under the collation, then the collation keys are compare correctly under the equals() method.

Parameters:

s - the string whose collation key is required

Returns:

the collation key