The compareCard Method

For primitive types, there are conditional operators that compare values and determine when one is greater or less than another. These operators (< and > and the others) don't work for object types. For Strings there is a built-in compare method. For Cards we have to write our own, which we will call compareCard. Later, we will use this method to sort a deck of cards.

Some sets are completely ordered, which means that you can compare any two elements and tell which is bigger. For example, the integers and the floating-point numbers are totally ordered. Some sets are unordered, which means that there is no meaningful way to say that one element is bigger than another. For example, the fruits are unordered, which is why we cannot compare apples and oranges. In Java, the boolean type is unordered; we cannot say that true is greater than false.

The set of playing cards is partially ordered, which means that sometimes we can compare cards and sometimes not. For example, I know that the 3 of Clubs is higher than the 2 of Clubs, and the 3 of Diamonds is higher than the 3 of Clubs. But which is better, the 3 of Clubs or the 2 of Diamonds? One has a higher rank, but the other has a higher suit.

In order to make cards comparable, we have to decide which is more important, rank or suit. To be honest, the choice is completely arbitrary. For the sake of choosing, I will say that suit is more important, because when you buy a new deck of cards, it comes sorted with all the Clubs together, followed by all the Diamonds, and so on.

With that decided, we can write compareCard. It will take two Cards as parameters and return 1 if the first card wins, -1 if the second card wins, and 0 if they tie (indicating deep equality). It is sometimes confusing to keep those return values straight, but they are pretty standard for comparison methods.

First we compare the suits:

If neither statement is true, then the suits must be equal, and we have to compare ranks:

If neither of these is true, the ranks must be equal, so we return 0. In this ordering, aces will appear lower than deuces (2s).

As an exercise, fix it so that aces are ranked higher than Kings, and encapsulate this code in a method.