… why do almost the all method implementations return only -1, 0, 1?
I can’t speak for other programmers, but I typically do this because it is simpler and more convenient to do that in most case. And most important, it is correct.
I imagine that you are thinking along the lines of doing this:
public int compareTo (MyClass other) {
return this.intField - other.intField;
}
Beware. This code is subtly wrong. See this Q&A: Java Integer compareTo() – why use comparison vs. subtraction?
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solved Is there the matter with the compareTo return value? [closed]