Why is this an issue?
It is the sign, rather than the magnitude of the value returned from compareTo that matters. Returning Integer.MIN_VALUE
does not convey a higher degree of inequality, and doing so can cause errors because the return value of compareTo is sometimes
inversed, with the expectation that negative values become positive. However, inversing Integer.MIN_VALUE yields
Integer.MIN_VALUE rather than Integer.MAX_VALUE.
Noncompliant code example
public int compareTo(MyClass) {
if (condition) {
return Integer.MIN_VALUE; // Noncompliant
}
Compliant solution
public int compareTo(MyClass) {
if (condition) {
return -1;
}
