Find the second largest string by length in a sentence using Java 8

import java.util.Arrays ; import java.util.Comparator ; import java.util.Optional ; public class SecondLargestString { public static void main ( String [] args ) { String sentence = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" ; Optional < String > secondLargest = Arrays . stream ( sentence . split ( "\\s+" )) // 1. Split into words . distinct () // 2. Remove duplicates (e.g., "The" and "the" would be treated as distinct here unless lowercased first) . sorted ( Comparator . comparingInt ( String: : length ). reversed () // 3. Sort by length in descending order . thenComparing ( Comparator . naturalOrder ())) // 4. Optional: sort alphabetically for ties in length . skip ( 1 ) // 5. Skip the longest string . findFirst (); // 6. Get the next string (the second longest) if ( secondLargest . isPresent ()) { System . out . println ( "The second largest string is: " + secondLargest . get ()); } else { System . out . println ( "Could not find the second largest string." ); } } }