Doubt in working of Arrays.sort method. help needed !!!!

Question

Hello Friends,
I am not able to understand output of Arrays.sort method. Here is the detail of problem
I wrote one program :
public static void main(String[] args) throws ClassNotFoundException
     Object[] a = new Object[10];
     a[0] = new String("1");
     a[1] = new String("2");
     a[2] = new String("4");
     a[3] = new String("3");
     a[4] = new String("5");
     a[5] = new String("20");
     a[6] = new String("6");
     a[7] = new String("9");
     a[8] = new String("7");
     a[9] = new String("8");
/* Sort entire array.*/
     Arrays.sort(a);
     for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++)
     System.out.println(a);
and output is :
1
2
20
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Question : Does this output is correct? If yes then on which basis api sort an array? I assume output should be 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20.
Can here any one please explain this?
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Rajesh Rathod

Answer 1

jverd wrote:
"20" and "3" are not numbers. They are strings, and "20" < "3" is exactly the same as "BA" < "C"The above is
... quote 20 quote less than quote 3 quote...
but shows up as
... quote 20 quote less than quote...
Weird.