public DefaultComparator() 
{
        this(Collator.getInstance());
}

Instantiate a default comparator with no collator specified.

 public DefaultComparator(Collator collatorToUse) 
{
        this.collator = collatorToUse;
        collator.setStrength(Collator.PRIMARY); // ignore case and accents
}

Instantiate a default comparator with a specified collator.

Parameters:

collatorToUse - collator instance

 public int compare(Object object1,
    Object object2) 
{
        int returnValue;
        if (object1 instanceof String && object2 instanceof String)
        {
            returnValue = collator.compare(object1, object2);
        }
        else if (object1 instanceof Comparable && object2 instanceof Comparable)
        {
            returnValue = ((Comparable) object1).compareTo(object2);
        }
        else
        {
            // if object are not null and don't implement comparable, compare using string values
            returnValue = collator.compare(object1.toString(), object2.toString());
        }
        return returnValue;
}

Compares two given objects. Not comparable objects are compared using their string representation. String comparisons are done using a Collator.