Re: How to sort these Strings?

Thank you for all your help. I have made it work:

         final TreeMap<String, String> treeMap = new TreeMap<String,
String>(new MyComparator());
         treeMap.putAll(getMap());

     static class MyComparator implements Comparator
     {
         public int compare(final Object element1, final Object element2)
         {
             final String a = element1.toString().toLowerCase();
             final String b = element2.toString().toLowerCase();

             if(a.contains("#") && b.contains("#"))
             {
                 final String subA = a.substring(7);
                 final String subB = b.substring(7);

                 final int intA = Integer.valueOf(subA);
                 final int intB = Integer.valueOf(subB);

                 if(intA < intB)
                 {
                     return -1;
                 }
                 else
                 {
                     return 1;
                 }
             }
             else
             {
                 return a.compareTo(b);
             }
         } //close compare
     } //close static class

I have purposely made the key like:

STATE_#0, STATE_#1, ..., STATE_#10, ...,