Collections.reverseOrder() in Java with Examples

Difficulty Level : Easy
Last Updated : 08 May, 2021

java.util.Collections.reverseOrder() method is a java.util.Collections class method.

// Returns a comparator that imposes the reverse of 
// the natural ordering on a collection of objects
// that implement the Comparable interface. 
// The natural ordering is the ordering imposed by 
// the objects' own compareTo method
public static  Comparator reverseOrder()

We can the comparator returned by Collections.reverseOrder() to sort a list in descending order.

JAVA

// Java program to demonstrate working of Collections.reveseOrder()
// to sort a list in descending order
import java.util.*;
 
public class Collectionsorting
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        // Create a list of Integers
        ArrayList<Integer> al = new ArrayList<Integer>();
        al.add(30);
        al.add(20);
        al.add(10);
        al.add(40);
        al.add(50);
 
        /* Collections.sort method is sorting the
        elements of ArrayList in descending order. */
        Collections.sort(al, Collections.reverseOrder());
 
        // Let us print the sorted list
        System.out.println("List after the use of Collection.reverseOrder()"+
                           " and Collections.sort() :\n" + al);
    }
}

Output:

List after the use of Collection.reverseOrder() and Collections.sort():
[50, 40, 30, 20, 10]

We can use this method with Arrays.sort() also.
Arrays.sort() cannot be used directly to sort primitive arrays in descending order. If you try to call the Arrays.sort() method by passing reverse Comparator defined by Collections.reverseOrder() , it will throw the error.

That will work fine with ‘Array of Objects’ such as the Integer array but will not work with a primitive array such as the int array.

JAVA

// Java program to demonstrate working of Collections.reveseOrder()
// to sort an array in descending order
import java.util.*;
 
public class Collectionsorting
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        // Create an array to be sorted in descending order.
        Integer [] arr = {30, 20, 40, 10};
 
        /* Collections.sort method is sorting the
        elements of arr[] in descending order. */
        Arrays.sort(arr, Collections.reverseOrder());
 
        // Let us print the sorted array
        System.out.println("Array after the use of Collection.reverseOrder()"+
                           " and Arrays.sort() :\n" + Arrays.toString(arr));
    }
}

Output:

Array after the use of Collection.reverseOrder() and Arrays.sort() :
[40, 30, 20, 10]

public static Comparator reverseOrder(Comparator c)
It returns a Comparator that imposes reverse order of a passed Comparator object. We can use this method to sort a list in reverse order of user defined Comparator. For example, in the below program, we have created a reverse of user defined comparator to sort students in descending order of roll numbers.

Java

// Java program to demonstrate working of
// reverseOrder(Comparator c) to sort students in descending
// order of roll numbers when there is a user defined comparator
// to do reverse.
import java.util.*;
import java.lang.*;
import java.io.*;
 
// A class to represent a student.
class Student
{
    int rollno;
    String name, address;
 
    // Constructor
    public Student(int rollno, String name,
                               String address)
    {
        this.rollno = rollno;
        this.name = name;
        this.address = address;
    }
 
    // Used to print student details in main()
    public String toString()
    {
        return this.rollno + " " + this.name +
                           " " + this.address;
    }
}
 
class Sortbyroll implements Comparator<Student>
{
    // Used for sorting in ascending order of
    // roll number
    public int compare(Student a, Student b)
    {
        return a.rollno - b.rollno;
    }
}
 
// Driver class
class Main
{
    public static void main (String[] args)
    {
        ArrayList<Student> ar = new ArrayList<Student>();
        ar.add(new Student(111, "bbbb", "london"));
        ar.add(new Student(131, "aaaa", "nyc"));
        ar.add(new Student(121, "cccc", "jaipur"));
 
        System.out.println("Unsorted");
        for (int i=0; i<ar.size(); i++)
            System.out.println(ar.get(i));
 
        // Sorting a list of students in descending order of
        // roll numbers using a Comparator that is reverse of
        // Sortbyroll()
        Comparator c = Collections.reverseOrder(new Sortbyroll());
        Collections.sort(ar, c);
 
        System.out.println("\nSorted by rollno");
        for (int i=0; i<ar.size(); i++)
            System.out.println(ar.get(i));
    }
}

Output :

Unsorted
111 bbbb london
131 aaaa nyc
121 cccc jaipur

Sorted by rollno
131 aaaa nyc
121 cccc jaipur
111 bbbb london

References:
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Collections.html#reverseOrder()
This article is contributed by Mohit Gupta. If you like GeeksforGeeks and would like to contribute, you can also write an article using write.geeksforgeeks.org or mail your article to contribute@geeksforgeeks.org. See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks main page and help other Geeks.
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