'compare()' method can be used to compare numbers

Reports expressions that can be replaced by a call to the Integer.compare() method or a similar method from the Long, Short, Byte, Double or Float classes, instead of more verbose or less efficient constructs.

If x and y are boxed integers, then x.compareTo(y) is suggested, if they are primitives Integer.compare(x, y) is suggested.

Example:

public int compare(int x, int y) {
  return x > y ? 1 : x < y ? -1 : 0;
}

After the quick-fix is applied:

public int compare(int x, int y) {
  return Integer.compare(x, y);
}

Note that Double.compare and Float.compare slightly change the code semantics. In particular, they make -0.0 and 0.0 distinguishable (Double.compare(-0.0, 0.0) yields -1). Also, they consistently process NaN value. In most of the cases, this semantics change actually improves the code. Use the checkbox to disable this inspection for floating point numbers if semantics change is unacceptable in your case.

New in 2017.2

Inspection options

Option	Type	Default
Suggest 'Double.compare()' and 'Float.compare()'	Checkbox	true

Inspection Details
Available in:	IntelliJ IDEA 2023.3, Qodana for JVM 2023.3
Plugin:	Java, 233.SNAPSHOT

Last modified: 13 July 2023