The class prior to the fourth assignment covered concordances, data structures for word counts, and other related topics. I completed one of the more challenging suggested alternative tasks for the assignment:

Investigate Java’s Collections class. See if you can figure out how to use Collections.sort() to sort the output of ConcordanceFilter.java—first in alphabetical order, then ordered by word count. (See the official Sun tutorial.)

The Java documentation was relatively clear about what I needed to do using the Collections and Comparator classes to get it working, and Google answered any remaining questions I had about syntax. There are a few files that I edited to run it (including AlphabeticComparator and a WordCountComparator classes), and you can download a zip file of the assignment here. When run, ConcordanceFilter.java will search for a word within a text and output each line on which that word occurred, then output those lines again in alphabetical order, and then output those lines a third time with the line with the fewest words first. For example:

$ java ConcordanceFilter place <lovecraft_dreams.txt
All contexts
remote place beyond the horizon, showing the ruin and antiquity of the city,
over a bridge to a place where the houses grew thinner and thinner. And it was
Contexts sorted alphabeticallydsfadsfd
over a bridge to a place where the houses grew thinner and thinner. And it was
remote place beyond the horizon, showing the ruin and antiquity of the city,
Contexts sorted by word count
remote place beyond the horizon, showing the ruin and antiquity of the city,
over a bridge to a place where the houses grew thinner and thinner. And it was