Let's say that I have two arrays (in Java),
int[] numbers; and int[] colors;
Each ith element of numbers corresponds to its ith element in colors. Ex, numbers = {4,2,1} colors = {0x11, 0x24, 0x01}; Means that number 4 is color 0x11, number 2 is 0x24, etc.
I want to sort the numbers array, but then still have it so each element matches up with its pair in colors.
Ex. numbers = {1,2,4}; colors = {0x01,0x24,0x11};
What's the cleanest, simplest way to do this? The arrays have a few thousand items, so being in place would be best, but not required. Would it make sense to do an Arrays.sort() and a custom comparator? Using library functions as much as possible is preferable.
Note: I know the "best" solution is to make a class for the two elements and use a custom comparator. This question is meant to ask people for the quickest way to code this. Imagine being at a programming competition, you wouldn't want to be making all these extra classes, anonymous classes for the comparator, etc. Better yet, forget Java; how would you code it in C?