Sorting an array of Strings

Question

Okay, my first concern is that I'm pretty new to Java. It's my first language that I've ever looked at, and I'm just getting into it.
I'm trying to read from a .txt file a name and an integer value associated with that name, like for instance, Jimmy Bob Jones 123. I have several lines of different names with different integers associated with each, sorted alphabetically in the .txt file to begin with. That's not the issue really--though I haven't figured out how to do that, I figure it's pretty simple compared to what I have to do with those. I set each line as a new element in an array of Strings, and then I want to sort them based on the value of the integer that follows each. I know that each integer is 5 digits, so I'm thinking about some way to sort based on Integer.parseInt(name.substring(name.length - 5, name.length)) for each element, but it's not coming to me.
I mean, let's say I have the following in a .txt file:
Abigail 32534
Bo 28935
Chris 45000
Damian 13777
And I feed those into my .class and set each line to an array element, so it would be like arrayName[0] = "Abigail 32534" etc. for each. Convoluted question, sorry. How would I sort those strings based solely on the integer values, yet also retain the name that goes along with it?
Any help is appreciated, though I don't guarantee I'll understand : )

Answer 1

One easy (such a relative term) way is to create an Object, such as NameAndNumber, which has two member variables (name and number). When you read in your file, create objects of this type.
As for the sorting, this is a two step process:
1) Create a Comparator class to compare your objects
2) Populate a TreeSet which uses this comparator.
The TreeSet will be sorted automatically (based on your Comparator) and you can then iterate through it to retrieve instances of your object.
This all sounds much more complicated than it is. I have written some code to get you started.
// Your class
public class NameAndNumber {
  private int m_nNumber;
  private String m_sName;
  // sets the name
  public void setName(String sName) {
    m_sName = sName;
  // gets the name
  public String getName() {
    return m_sName;
  // sets the number
  public void setNumber(int nNumber) {
    m_nNumber = nNumber;
  // gets the number
  public int getNumber() {
    return m_nNumber;
// Your comparator
public class MyComparator implements Comparator {
  // required by interface
  public int compare(Object obj1, Object obj2) {
    // throws ClassCastException if there is a problem - you will need to add
    // handling if this is an issue
    NameAndNumber objNan1 = (NameAndNumber) obj1;
    NameAndNumber objNan2 = (NameAndNumber) obj2;
    // will return the proper comparison based on the number
    return (objNan1.getNumber() - objNan2.getNumber());
// Inside your "main" class
TreeSet setNumbers = new TreeSet(new MyComparator());
NameAndNumber objNameAndNumber = getNextListing(); // you need to provide this method, which gets the items one at a time
setNumbers.add(objNameAndNumber);Hope this helps.