Sorting Values of Set

Use a SortedSet (TreeSet is the default one):

SortedSet<String> set=new TreeSet<String>();
set.add("12");
set.add("15");
set.add("5");
List<String> list=new ArrayList<String>(set);

No extra sorting code needed.

Oh, I see you want a different sort order. Supply a Comparator to the TreeSet:

new TreeSet<String>(Comparator.comparing(Integer::valueOf));

Now your TreeSet will sort Strings in numeric order (which implies that it will throw exceptions if you supply non-numeric strings)

Reference:

• Java Tutorial (Collections Trail):
  • Object Ordering
  • The SortedSet interface
• Javadocs: TreeSet
• Javadocs: Comparator

If you sort the strings "12", "15" and "5" then "5" comes last because "5" > "1". i.e. the natural ordering of Strings doesn't work the way you expect.

If you want to store strings in your list but sort them numerically then you will need to use a comparator that handles this. e.g.

Collections.sort(list, new Comparator<String>() {
    public int compare(String o1, String o2) {
        Integer i1 = Integer.parseInt(o1);
        Integer i2 = Integer.parseInt(o2);
        return (i1 > i2 ? -1 : (i1 == i2 ? 0 : 1));
    }
});

Also, I think you are getting slightly mixed up between Collection types. A HashSet and a HashMap are different things.