Sorting multiple arrays

It's easy to do this using OOP. Create a structure that contains your data and specify a sorting method:

public class MyStructure implements Comparable
{
     public String string;
     public int int1;
     public int int2;

     public int compareTo(Object obj)
     {
          if (obj instanceof MyStructure)
          {
              return ((MyStructure) obj.int1) - int1;
          }
          return 0;
     }

}

Now create an array of those structures and sort that array.

It's easy - you need to write a method that will take your arrays (list of arrays, arrays of arrays or var arg of arrays) and sort first of them that will result in changing indexes of elements in other arrays too.

The Java recomended way is not to maintain 3 separate Arrays but to create a List of Objects and use Collections.sort() to sort the objects (Not sure if that is possible for your use case). Hence all the properties would always be in sync. Your Object should implement Comparable interface and hence you will be forced to override compareTo() method

public class MySortable implements Comparable {
   private String strVal;
   private int intVala;
   private int intValb;

   public int compareTo(MySortable other) {
      // Use Integer's compareTo method instead of writing your own logic
      return Integer.valueof(intVala).compareTo(Integer.valueOf(other.intVala));
   }
}

Create a class to encapsulate the three fiels you mentioned.

class MyClass{
String input:
int a;
int b;
}

Then depending on if you want to sort on String or integers, create an appropriate Comparator which will compare on that field and give you sorted array.

ArrayList<MyClass> a;
Collections.sort(a, new Comparator<MyClass> {
int compareTo(MyClass a, MyClass b){
a.getInt1()-b.getInt2();
}

The benefit of using Comparator will that according to your use case, you can sort for both stings as well as integers.

Jixi asked "Or should I use something else to store the data?"

Yes you should. I recommend that you create a new class that stores all three things:

public class TimedEvent implements Comparable<TimedEvent> {
    String title;
    int time1, time2;

    public TimedEvent(String name, int t1, int t2) {
        title = name;
        time1= t1;
        time2=t2;
    }

    public int compareTo(TimedEvent otherEvent) {
        return title.compareTo(otherEvent.title);
    }
}

Now Arrays.sort will work for you:

TimedEvent[] eventArray = new TimedEvent[5000];
// lots of events get stored.
eventArray[0] = new TimeEvent("Start", 125,134);
eventArray[1] = new TimeEvent("FireClose", 128,139);
eventArray[2] = new TimeEvent("Important Action", 1328,1339);

Arrays.sort(eventArray)

Note that any element of the array that you do not initialize will be null and this will throw an exception when you try to sort. So make sure that the length of the array is exactly what you need. If you don't know how many events you will be storing beforehand, then use an ArrayList instead:

ArrayList<TimedEvent> eventList = new ArrayList<>(); //java7 syntax. use                         
                                 // new ArrayList<TimedEvent>(); if using Java 6.
// lots of events get stored.
eventList.add(new TimeEvent("Start", 125,134));
eventList.add(new TimeEvent("FireClose", 128,139));
eventList.add(new TimeEvent("Important Action", 1328,1339));

Collections.sort(eventList);