What is ComparableUtils.ge in Java?

Overview

The ge() is a staticThe methods in Java that can be called without creating an object of the class. method of the ComparableUtils class that returns a predicate for the passed value. The predicate checks for the greater than or equal to (\ge) condition against the passed value.

Note: Refer What is a Java predicate? to learn more about predicates in Java.

How to import ComparableUtils

We can find the definition of ComparableUtils in the Apache Commons Lang package. We can add it to the Maven project by adding the following dependency to the pom.xml file:


<dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
            <version>3.12.0</version>
</dependency>

Note: For other versions of the commons-lang package, refer to the Maven Repository.

Import the ComparableUtils class as follows:


import org.apache.commons.lang3.compare.ComparableUtils;

Syntax


public static <A extends Comparable<A>> Predicate<A> ge(final A b)

Parameters

  • final A b: This is the object to be compared to the returned predicate.

Return value

This method returns a predicate.

Code example

Let’s look at the code below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>org.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>test</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <properties>
        <maven.compiler.source>8</maven.compiler.source>
        <maven.compiler.target>8</maven.compiler.target>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
            <version>3.12.0</version>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.1</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <phase>package</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>shade</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <configuration>
                            <transformers>
                                <transformer
                                        implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ManifestResourceTransformer">
                                    <mainClass>Main</mainClass>
                                </transformer>
                            </transformers>
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

Code explanation

The Maven dependency for ComparableUtils is included in the pom.xml file.

In the Main.java file:

  • Lines 1 and 2: We import the relevant classes.
  • Line 7: We define an integer variable called val.
  • Line 8: We pass val as the parameter to the ComparableUtils.ge() method. This returns a predicate called greaterThanEqualTo.
  • Line 9: We define an integer test value called testVal.
  • Line 10: We test whether testVal is greater than or equal to val using the test() method of the predicate. The result of the comparison is printed.
  • Lines 12 to 16: We test the predicate with different values for the greater than or equal to condition against val.