Sorting a List of Strings in Java by Length and Alphabetical Order - Unexpected Result with Comparator
This might be a silly question, but I'm experimenting with This might be a silly question, but I'm trying to sort a list of strings in Java first by their lengths and then alphabetically for strings of the same length. I'm using the following approach with a custom comparator: ```java import java.util.*; public class StringSorter { public static void main(String[] args) { List<String> strings = Arrays.asList("apple", "banana", "pear", "kiwi", "fig", "grape", "melon"); Collections.sort(strings, new Comparator<String>() { @Override public int compare(String s1, String s2) { int lengthComparison = Integer.compare(s1.length(), s2.length()); return lengthComparison != 0 ? lengthComparison : s1.compareTo(s2); } }); System.out.println(strings); } } ``` However, I am getting an unexpected result. The output I receive is: ``` [fig, pear, apple, grape, kiwi, banana, melon] ``` I expected the output to be sorted such that shorter strings appear first, and within the same length, they should appear in alphabetical order. Instead, the string "apple" (length 5) appears after both "fig" (length 3) and "pear" (length 4), which seems incorrect. After reviewing my comparator logic, I need to see what’s causing the scenario. I also confirmed that the strings are correctly passed to the sort method. I'm using Java 11 and the `Arrays` and `Collections` libraries. Is there something I'm missing in the comparator implementation? Any suggestions on how to fix the sorting scenario? Thanks in advance for your help! Any help would be greatly appreciated! Am I approaching this the right way?