assign values to Rank in a poker game

Question

How do you assign values to Rank in a poker game. I have the name Ranks of the cards and they are stored in a Collection method, but I cant figure out how to pull out the values and assign them a digit number value.

private Collection cards; // so this is my hands and I have my cards stored here, but now I wanna pull them out and assign them digit values.

Thanks!

Update: I am trying to compare the ranks of the cards.

Answer 1

You can use enums to store your cards' Rank (DUECE to ACE) and Suit (CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, SPADES)

Something like this:

enum Suit{
    CLUBS, DIAMONDS, HEARTS, SPADES;
}

enum Rank {
    DEUCE, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE, TEN, JACK, QUEEN, KING, ACE;
}

Card can be a class that has each of a Rank and Suit:

public class Card{
    Rank rank;
    Suit suit;

    Card(Rank rank, Suit suit) {
        ...
    }

}

If you need a value for each rank, add a method to enum Rank so that it returns value. Like this:

enum Rank {
    DEUCE, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE, TEN, JACK, QUEEN, KING, ACE;

    public int value() {
        return this.ordinal() + 2; // This will return 2 for DEUCE, 3 for THREE and so on..
    }
}

--

Hope this helps!