What is the best way to get min and max value from a list of Comparables that main contain null values?

user2427 picture user2427 · Dec 15, 2008 · Viewed 42.2k times · Source

I am thinking about something like this:

public static <T extends Comparable<T>> T minOf(T...ts){        
    SortedSet<T> set = new TreeSet<T>(Arrays.asList(ts));
    return set.first();
}

public static <T extends Comparable<T>> T maxOf(T...ts){
    SortedSet<T> set = new TreeSet<T>(Arrays.asList(ts));
    return set.last();
}

But is not null safe, which is something I want too.

Do you know a better way to solve this problem?

EDIT:

After the comments I have also tried min():

public static <T extends Comparable<T>> T minOf(T...ts){        
    return Collections.min(Arrays.asList(ts), new Comparator<T>(){

        public int compare(T o1, T o2) {
            if(o1!=null && o2!=null){
                return o1.compareTo(o2);
            }else if(o1!=null){
                return 1;
            }else{
                return -1;  
            }
        }});
}

What do you think of that?

Answer

Pyrolistical picture Pyrolistical · Dec 15, 2008

What's wrong with Collections.max?

And why do you care about null safety? Are you sure you want to allow nulls to be in your Collection?