Why doesn't character datatype take up more than one character ?

[Amiya Maitreya]

Hello.
I use BlueJ 3.0.1
I am writing a program to dictionarize words(arrange words in dictionary order).

But the 'char' type isn't working properly.

char ch1 = 'qwerty' ;//shows error
char ch2 = 'qwedrt';
if(ch1>ch2)
{
System.out.println(ch2);
System.out.println(ch1);
}
else
{
System.out.println(ch1);
System.out.println(ch2);
 

Please help with it and program.
* NOTE for Bytes.com : THIS IS NOT A HOMEWORK QUESTION.

[Amiya Maitreya]

given code is a snippet

[Dheeraj Joshi]

'qwerty' 
 

This is certainly not a character. You can have a single character within single quote for char data type.

char ch2 = 'p'; 
 

Regards
Dheeraj Joshi

[Amiya Maitreya]

bt then hw will i dictionarize ?

[Dheeraj Joshi]

What do you mean by dictionarize? I am unable to understand your question.

Regards
Dheeraj Joshi

[Amiya Maitreya]

Aim of my program is to arrange entered words in dictionary order....hw would i do that !!

[Dheeraj Joshi]

Take String datatype to handle this.

Regards
Dheeraj Joshi

[Amiya Maitreya]

But > , < , = operators don't work with string !

[Dheeraj Joshi]

Use

java.util.Arrays.sort(MyStringArray);
 

Otherwise put the strings in sortedset. And retrieve them

Regards
Dheeraj Joshi

[Amiya Maitreya]

kk. you knw by any method i can convert string to char ???
like i entered + as string datatype but want to convert it to + of char datatype

[Dheeraj Joshi]

You can convert it into character array.

char[] characters = str.toCharArray();
 

Take the char at position 0

or

char myChar = str.charAt(0);
 

Regards
Dheeraj Joshi

[Amiya Maitreya]

without arrays?

[Dheeraj Joshi]

See second option in my last post(11).

Regards
Dheeraj Joshi

[Amiya Maitreya]

it workd ...thnx

[Dheeraj Joshi]

Good to know that.