Question

This is my course class. Can someone please explain what the equals method is for and also the compareTo method is for in general and then explain what the methods are doing in this class.

public class Course {
   private boolean isGraduateCourse;
   private int courseNum;
   private String courseDept;
   private int numCredits;
  
   public Course(boolean isGraduateCourse, int courseNum, String courseDept, int numCredits) {
       this.isGraduateCourse=isGraduateCourse;
       this.courseNum=courseNum;
       this.courseDept=courseDept;
       this.numCredits=numCredits;
   }
   public boolean isGraduateCourse() {
       return this.isGraduateCourse;
   }
   public int getCourseNum() {
       return courseNum;
   }
   public String getCourseDept() {
       return courseDept;
   }
   public int getNumCredits() {
       return numCredits;
   }
   public String getCourseName() {
       if (this.isGraduateCourse == true) {
           return "G" + this.courseDept + this.courseNum;
       }
       else {
           return "U" + this.courseDept + this.courseNum;
       }
   }
   public boolean equals(Object obj) {
       Course other=(Course)obj;
       if(this.isGraduateCourse!=other.isGraduateCourse) {
           return false;
       }
       if(this.courseNum!=other.courseNum) {
           return false;
       }
       if(this.courseDept!=other.courseDept) {
           return false;
       }
       if(this.numCredits!=other.numCredits) {
           return false;
       }
       else
           return true;
   }
   public String toString() {
       if(isGraduateCourse) {
           return String.format("Course: %3s-%3d | Number of Credits: %02d | Graduate", courseDept,courseNum, numCredits, isGraduateCourse);
       }
       else {
           return String.format("Course: %3s-%3d | Number of Credits: %02d | Undergraduate", courseDept, courseNum,numCredits,isGraduateCourse);
       }
   }
   public int compareTo(Course c) {
       if(courseNum==c.getCourseNum()) {
           return 0;
       }
       else if(courseNum>=c.getCourseNum()){
           return 1;
       }
       else {
           return -1;
       }
   }
}

Answer 1

Here equal method is used to check the equality with other Course object
so here are checking if both objects courseNum and courseDept and
numCredits are same than we are returning true means both objectsare same
this will help when we are adding the Course objects to any collections

compareTo():
This is used to compare the 2 objects to check which one is greaters
if both are equal than it will return 0 , if it is less than than it will return -1
else it will return 1
so here we are comparing the 2 objects based on the courseNum

so this will help when we want sort the Course objects in Arrays or Collections

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