Sure – you simply can’t apply the >
operator between objects. What would you expect it to do? You can’t apply any of the other binary operators either – +
, -
, /
etc (with the exception of string concatenation).
Ideally, you should make your TreeNode
generic, and either have a Comparator<T>
which is able to compare any two instances, or make T extend Comparable<T>
. Either way, you can then compare them with:
int comparisonResult = comparator.compare(current.getValue(), t.getValue());
if (comparisonResult > 0) {
// current "greater than" t
} else if (comparisonResult < 0) {
// current "less than" t
} else {
// Equal
}
or
int comparisonResult = current.getValue().compareTo(t.getValue());
// Code as before
Without generics you could cast the values to Comparable
or still use a general Comparator
… but generics would be a better bet.