Ordered Array

The elements of an ordered array are arranged in ascending (or descending) order. The picture shows an array of ints arranged into ascending order.

The array can have duplicate elements. The elements of an array can be arranged in order by using a static sort() method of the Arrays class.

static void sort( array )  // Sort the array into ascending order

There are sort() methods for arrays of type byte[], char[], double[], float[], int[], and long[]. There is also a method that can sort object references based on the values of the objects.

Sorting is an important process in computer programming. Many data processing operations depend on data that is sorted, much as the data in a filing cabinet is kept sorted.