AlphabeticalComparison.java

public class AlphabeticalComparison {
  
  public static void main(String[] args) {
  
    System.out.println("apple".compareTo("orange")); //Gives back a negative number because "apple" comes before "orange" alphabetically
    
    System.out.println("orange".compareTo("apple")); //Gives back a positive number because "orange" comes after "apple" alphabetically
    
    //Note that .compareTo() doesn't ignore cases. A word with an uppercase character will appear *before* a letter earlier in the alphabet
    //(because the alphabet is actually the unicode table)
    
    //Unicode table for English alphabet
    //ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO0050PQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmno0070pqrstuvwxyz
    //                             ^        ^
    //                             |        |
    //                             |       'c' comes second
    //                            'Z' comes first
    
    //An exmaple of this:
    System.out.println("Zebra".compareTo("carrot")); //Gives back a negative number because "Zebra" (with a capital Z) comes before "carrot" (with a lowercase c) in unicode
    //Even though, in English, Zebra would be put after carrot alphabetically
    
    //To fix this, you can use a different method that does the same thing as String.compareTo()
    
    System.out.println("Zebra".compareToIgnoreCase("carrot")); //Run this, and you'll get a positive number because "Zebra" comes after "carrot" when you ignore cases
    
  }
  
}