When to use IComparable Vs. IComparer

Question

I'm trying to figure out which of these interfaces I need to implement. They both essentially do the same thing. When would I use one over the other?

Answer 1

As others have said, they don't do the same thing.

In any case, these days I tend not to use IComparer. Why would I? Its responsibility (an external entity used to compare two objects) can be handled much cleaner with a lambda expression, similar to how most of LINQ's methods work. Write a quick lambda which takes the objects to compare as arguments, and returns a bool. And if the object defines its own intrinsic compare operation, it can implement IComparable instead.

Answer 2

It depends on the entity. For example following for a class like "Student", it will make sense to have IComparable based on Name.

class Student : IComparable 
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public int MathScore { get; set; }
    public int EnglishScore { get; set; }

    public int TotalScore 
    {
        get
        {
            return this.MathScore + this.EnglishScore; 
        }
    }

    public int CompareTo(object obj)
    {
        return CompareTo(obj as Student);  
    }

    public int CompareTo(Student other)
    {
        if (other == null)
        {
            return 1;
        }
        return this.Name.CompareTo(other.Name);  
    }
}

But if a teacher 'A' wants to compare students based on MathScore, and teacher 'B' wants to compare students based on EnglishScore. It will be good idea to implement IComparer separately. (More like a strategy pattern)

class CompareByMathScore : IComparer<Student>
{
    public int Compare(Student x, Student y)
    {
        if (x.MathScore > y.MathScore)
          return 1;
        if (x.MathScore < y.MathScore)
          return -1;
        else
          return 0;
    }
}