Adjacent number algorithm grouper

Question

By which I mean this:

Given the input set of numbers:

1,2,3,4,5 becomes \"1-5\".

1,2,3,5,7,9,10,11,12,14 becomes \"1-3, 5, 7, 9-12, 14\"

This is

Answer 1

As I wrote in comment, I am not fan of the use of value 0 as flag, making firstNumber both a value and a flag.

I did a quick implementation of the algorithm in Java, boldly skipping the validity tests you already correctly covered...

public class IntListToRanges
{
    // Assumes all numbers are above 0
    public static String[] MakeRanges(int[] numbers)
    {
        ArrayList ranges = new ArrayList();

        Arrays.sort(numbers);
        int rangeStart = 0;
        boolean bInRange = false;
        for (int i = 1; i <= numbers.length; i++)
        {
            if (i < numbers.length && numbers[i] - numbers[i - 1] == 1)
            {
                if (!bInRange)
                {
                    rangeStart = numbers[i - 1];
                    bInRange = true;
                }
            }
            else
            {
                if (bInRange)
                {
                    ranges.add(rangeStart + "-" + numbers[i - 1]);
                    bInRange = false;
                }
                else
                {
                    ranges.add(String.valueOf(numbers[i - 1]));
                }
            }
        }
        return ranges.toArray(new String[ranges.size()]);
    }

    public static void ShowRanges(String[] ranges)
    {
        for (String range : ranges)
        {
            System.out.print(range + ","); // Inelegant but quickly coded...
        }
        System.out.println();
    }

    /**
     * @param args
     */
    public static void main(String[] args)
    {
        int[] an1 = { 1,2,3,5,7,9,10,11,12,14,15,16,22,23,27 };
        int[] an2 = { 1,2 };
        int[] an3 = { 1,3,5,7,8,9,11,12,13,14,15 };
        ShowRanges(MakeRanges(an1));
        ShowRanges(MakeRanges(an2));
        ShowRanges(MakeRanges(an3));
        int L = 100;
        int[] anr = new int[L];
        for (int i = 0, c = 1; i < L; i++)
        {
            int incr = Math.random() > 0.2 ? 1 : (int) Math.random() * 3 + 2;
            c += incr;
            anr[i] = c;
        }
        ShowRanges(MakeRanges(anr));
    }
}

I won't say it is more elegant/efficient than your algorithm, of course... Just something different.

Note that 1,5,6,9 can be written either 1,5-6,9 or 1,5,6,9, not sure what is better (if any).

I remember having done something similar (in C) to group message numbers to Imap ranges, as it is more efficient. A useful algorithm.