How do I know the class of an object?

For instance, you have a collection of objects in an List object, and you want to do some logic based on the object’s class. This can easily be done using the instanceof operator. The operator returns true if an object is an instance of a specified class, if not it will return false.

The instanceof operator is most likely used when implementing an equals(Object o) method of an object to check if the compared object is from the same class.

package org.kodejava.lang;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

public class InstanceOfExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Person person = new Person("John");
        Animal animal = new Animal("Highland");
        Thing thing = new Thing("Red");
        String text = "hello";
        Integer number = 1000;

        List<Object> list = new ArrayList<>();
        list.add(person);
        list.add(animal);
        list.add(thing);
        list.add(text);
        list.add(number);

        for (Object o : list) {
            if (o instanceof Person) {
                System.out.println("My name is " + ((Person) o).getName());
            } else if (o instanceof Animal) {
                System.out.println("I live in " + ((Animal) o).getHabitat());
            } else if (o instanceof Thing) {
                System.out.println("My color is " + ((Thing) o).getColor());
            } else if (o instanceof String) {
                System.out.println("My text is " + o.toString());
            } else if (o instanceof Integer) {
                System.out.println("My value is " + ((Integer) o));
            }
        }
    }
}

class Person {
    private final String name;

    public Person(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }
}

class Animal {
    private final String habitat;

    public Animal(String habitat) {
        this.habitat = habitat;
    }

    public String getHabitat() {
        return habitat;
    }
}

class Thing {
    private final String color;

    public Thing(String color) {
        this.color = color;
    }

    public String getColor() {
        return color;
    }
}

The result of the code snippet above:

My name is John
I live in Highland
My color is Red
My text is hello
My value is 1000

How do I replace characters in string?

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class StringReplace {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String text = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
        System.out.println("Before: " + text);

        // The replace method replace all occurrences of character
        // 'o' with 'u' and returns a new string object.
        text = text.replace('o', 'u');
        System.out.println("After : " + text);
    }
}

The result of the code snippet:

Before: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
After : The quick bruwn fux jumps uver the lazy dug

How do I copy char array to string?

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class CharArrayCopyExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        char[] data = {'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j'};

        // Copy all value in the char array and create a new string out of it.
        String text = String.valueOf(data);
        System.out.println(text);

        // Copy a sub array from the char array and create a new string. The
        // following line will just copy 5 characters starting from array index
        // of 3. If the element copied is outside the array index an
        // IndexOutOfBoundsException will be thrown.
        text = String.copyValueOf(data, 3, 5);
        System.out.println(text);
    }
}

The result:

abcdefghij
defgh

How do I remove leading and trailing white space from string?

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class TrimStringExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String text = "     tattarrattat     ";
        System.out.println("Original      = " + text);
        System.out.println("text.length() = " + text.length());

        // The trim() method will result a new string object with a leading and
        // trailing while space removed.
        text = text.trim();
        System.out.println("Result        = " + text);
        System.out.println("text.length() = " + text.length());
    }
}

The result of the code snippet above:

Original      =      tattarrattat     
text.length() = 22
Result        = tattarrattat
text.length() = 12

How do I add leading zeros to a number?

This example shows you how to use the String.format() method to add zero padding to a number. If you just want to print out the result you can use System.out.format(). This method is available since Java 1.5, so If you use a previous version you can use the NumberFormat class, see: How do I format a number with leading zeros?.

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class LeadingZerosExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int number = 1500;

        // String format below will add leading zeros (the %0 syntax)
        // to the number above. The length of the formatted string will
        // be 7 characters.
        String formatted = String.format("%07d", number);

        System.out.println("Number with leading zeros: " + formatted);
    }
}

Here is the result of the code snippet above:

Number with leading zeros: 0001500

For more information about the format syntax you can find it here.