What is the purpose of String.strip() method of Java 11?

By Wayan in Lang Package 0 Comment

The purpose of the String.strip() method in Java 11 is to remove whitespaces from both the beginning and end of a string. This is very similar to the String.trim() method available in earlier versions of Java, but there is a key difference between them.

Here’s the difference:

  • String.strip(): Introduced in Java 11, strip() uses the unicode definition of whitespace. It removes not only space characters but also all other types of unicode-defined spaces, such as the thin space \u2009, etc.
  • String.trim(): Available from Java 1.0, trim() is more limited. It considers a whitespace to be any character whose ASCII value is less than or equal to 32 (a space, tab, newline, and a few other control characters).

Here are examples of how they work:

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class StringStripExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // String.strip()
        String first = " \u2009Hello  ";
        System.out.println(first.strip()); // Outputs "Hello"

        // String.trim()
        String second = " \u2009Hello  ";
        System.out.println(second.trim()); // Outputs "\u2009Hello"
    }
}

Output:

Hello
 Hello

Thus, strip() method is more comprehensive in removing different types of whitespace defined in Unicode, while trim() only removes ASCII control characters and spaces.

There are also String.stripLeading() and String.stripTrailing() methods that were introduced in Java 11, and they are similar to the strip() method, but they only remove the whitespace characters from either the beginning or the end of the string, respectively.

Here is what they do:

  • String.stripLeading(): This method removes any leading whitespace from the string. “Leading” in this context means any whitespace characters at the beginning of the string.
  • String.stripTrailing(): This method removes any trailing whitespace from the string. “Trailing” in this context means any whitespace characters at the end of the string.

Both stripLeading() and stripTrailing() use the Unicode definition of whitespace, the same as strip() method.

Here are examples of how they work:

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class StringStripLeadingTrailingExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Strip leading whitespace
        String first = " \u2009Hello World  ";
        System.out.println(first.stripLeading());  // Outputs "Hello World  "

        // Strip trailing whitespace
        String second = " \u2009Hello World  ";
        System.out.println(second.stripTrailing()); // Outputs " \u2009Hello World"
    }
}

Output:

Hello World  
  Hello World

As demonstrated, stripLeading() removed the whitespace characters from the front of the string, and stripTrailing() removed the whitespace characters from the end of the string.

While \u00A0 is technically a type of whitespace (specifically, a non-breaking space or NBSP), it isn’t considered as such by the strip(), stripLeading(), and stripTrailing() methods, which follow the Character.isWhitespace(char) method’s definition of what constitutes a whitespace character.

According to the Java documentation, the Character.isWhitespace(char) method, which the strip() methods use, considers the following characters as whitespace:

  • ‘\t’ U+0009 HORIZONTAL TABULATION
  • ‘\n’ U+000A LINE FEED
  • ‘\u000B’ U+000B VERTICAL TABULATION
  • ‘\f’ U+000C FORM FEED
  • ‘\r’ U+000D CARRIAGE RETURN
  • ‘\u001C’ U+001C FILE SEPARATOR
  • ‘\u001D’ U+001D GROUP SEPARATOR
  • ‘\u001E’ U+001E RECORD SEPARATOR
  • ‘\u001F’ U+001F UNIT SEPARATOR
  • SPACE_SEPARATOR category types

The \u2009 (thin space) and \u0020 (space) are part of SPACE_SEPARATOR category according to Unicode standard and will be correctly stripped.

The \u00A0 (non-breaking space) is actually part of a different category called the NO-BREAK_SPACE and is not considered whitespace by Character.isWhitespace(char), so it won’t be stripped.

How do I create a string of repeated characters?

By Wayan in Basic 0 Comment

The following code demonstrates how to create a string of repeated characters. We use the String.repeat(int count) method introduced in Java 11. This method takes one parameter of type int which is the number of times to repeat the string. The count must be a positive number, a negative number will cause this method to throw java.lang.IllegalArgumentException.

In the snippet below, we use the method to repeat characters and draw some triangles. We combine the repeat() method with a for loop to draw the triangles.

package org.kodejava.basic;

public class StringRepeatDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String star = "*";
        String fiveStars = star.repeat(5);
        System.out.println("fiveStars = " + fiveStars);

        String arrow = "-->";
        String arrows = arrow.repeat(10);
        System.out.println("arrows    = " + arrows);
    }
}

The outputs of the code snippet above are:

fiveStars = *****
arrows    = -->-->-->-->-->-->-->-->-->-->

package org.kodejava.basic;

public class StringRepeatDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String asterisk = "#";
        for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {
            System.out.println(asterisk.repeat(i));
        }
}

The outputs of the code snippet above are:

#
##
###
####
#####
######
#######
########
#########
##########

package org.kodejava.basic;

public class StringRepeatDemo {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int height = 10;
        for (int i = 1, j = 1; i <= height; i++, j += 2) {
            System.out.println(" ".repeat(height - i) + "*".repeat(j));
        }
    }
}

The outputs of the code snippet above are:

         *
        ***
       *****
      *******
     *********
    ***********
   *************
  ***************
 *****************
*******************

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

By Wayan in Core API, Lang Package 0 Comment 
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 convert string to char array?

By Wayan in Core API, Lang Package 0 Comment

Here we have a small class that convert a string literal into an array, a character array. To do this we can simply use String.toCharArray() method.

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class StringToArrayExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // We have a string literal that contains the tag line of this blog.
        String literal = "Kode Java - Learn Java by Examples";

        // Now we want to convert or divided it into a small array of char.
        // To do this we can simply used String.toCharArray() method. This
        // method splits the string into an array of characters.
        char[] temp = literal.toCharArray();

        // Here we just iterate the char array and print it to our console.
        for (char c : temp) {
            System.out.print(c);
        }
    }
}

How do I check a string starts with a specific word?

By Wayan in Core API, Lang Package 0 Comment

To test if a string starts with a specific prefix we can use the String.startsWith(String prefix) method. This method returns a boolean true as the result if the string starts with that specified prefix. The String.startsWith() method checks the prefix in case-sensitive manner.

The following code snippet give us a small example how to use this method, but instead of just straightly checks using the startsWith() method, we add a scanner that allows us to input the prefix that we want to test.

package org.kodejava.lang;

import java.util.Scanner;

import static java.lang.System.in;

public class StringStartsWithExample {
    private static final Scanner scanner = new Scanner(in);

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

        System.out.print("Type the prefix to test: ");
        String search = scanner.nextLine();

        // Check if the text start with the search text.
        if (text.startsWith(search)) {
            System.out.println("Yes, the fox is the quick one");
        } else {
            System.out.println("The fox is a slow fox");
        }
    }
}

The code snippet print the following output:

Text: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Type the prefix to test: The quick brown fox
Yes, the fox is the quick one

How do I check a string ends with a specific word?

By Wayan in Core API, Lang Package 0 Comment

The String.endsWith() method can be used to check if a string ends with a specific word. It will return a boolean true if the suffix is found at the end of the string object.

In this example we will start the code by creating a class called StringEndsWithExample. This class has a standard main() method that makes the class executable. In the main() method we create a string variable called str and assign a text to it.

On the following line you can see an if conditional statement to check it the str string ends with "lazy dog". If it ends with that words then the corresponding block in the if statement will be executed.

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class StringEndsWithExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String str = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";

        // well, does the fox jumps over a lazy dog?
        if (str.endsWith("lazy dog")) {
            System.out.println("The dog is a lazy dog");
        } else {
            System.out.println("Good dog!");
        }

        // Ends with empty string.
        if (str.endsWith("")) {
            System.out.println("true");
        }

        // Ends with the same string.
        if (str.endsWith(str)) {
            System.out.println("true");
        }
    }
}

Another thing that you need to know is that the endsWith() method will return true if you pass in an empty string or another string that is equals to this string as the argument. This method is also case-sensitive.

When you run the code snippet above you can see the following lines printed out:

The dog is a lazy dog
true
true

How do I know the length of a string?

By Wayan in Core API, Lang Package 0 Comment

To get the length of a String object we can use the String.length() method. This method returns the string length as an int value. The length of the string is equals to the length of the sequence of characters represented by this string object, and it is equals to the number of 16-bit Unicode characters in the string.

The following code snippet shows how to use the length() method. We create a string object name and assign a text to it. Call the method and store the length returned to the length variable and print it out. We can also use the length() method to check if the string is empty by checking if the length is equals to zero.

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class StringLengthExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String name = "Kode Java - Learn Java by Examples";

        // Get the length of the string specified by the name
        // variable.
        int length = name.length();
        System.out.println("Length = " + length);

        // Set name to an empty string and test if it is empty.
        name = "";
        length = name.length();
        if (length == 0) {
            System.out.println("The string is empty!");
        }
    }
}

If you run this code you will get the following output:

Length = 34
The string is empty!

How do I check string for equality?

By Wayan in Core API, Lang Package 0 Comment

To compare strings for their content equality we must use the String.equals() method. This method ensures that it will compare the content of both string instead of the object reference of the both string. This method returns true if both string in comparison have the same content.

Do not, never, use the == operator to compare string for its content. The == operator check for object reference equality, it returns true only if both objects point to the same reference. This operator returns false if the object doesn’t point to the same references.

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class StringEquals {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String s1 = "Hello World";
        String s2 = new String("Hello World");

        // This is good!
        if (s1.equals(s2)) {
            System.out.println("1. Both strings are equals.");
        } else {
            System.out.println("1. Both strings are not equals.");
        }

        // This is bad!
        if (s1 == s2) {
            System.out.println("2. Both strings are equals.");
        } else {
            System.out.println("2. Both strings are not equals.");
        }
    }
}

In the example above we deliberately create an instance of s2 string using the new operator to make sure that we have a different object reference. When you run the program it will give you the following result:

1. Both strings are equals.
2. Both strings are not equals.

How do I check if a string contains a specific word?

By Wayan in Core API, Lang Package 1 Comment

In this code example we are going to learn how to find a specific word or text inside a string. For this example we will utilize the java.lang.String class. The String class provides a method called String.indexOf(). It takes an argument of a String, which is the sub string that we want to find in the other string. You can imagine the sub string as a needle that we are going to find in the haystack.

If the word found more than once in the string, the indexOf() method returns the first index of a sub string found in the specified string. If the sub string can’t be found this method returns -1. The index of string returns by this method begin at zero. It means that the first letter in the string have the index number 0.

Another way that we can use is the String.contains() method. This method introduced in JDK 1.5. The method simply return a boolean value which is true or false indicating whether the string in search is found in the haystack. Let’s see the snippet below:

package org.kodejava.lang;

public class StringContainsExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String haystack = "Kodejava - Learn Java by Examples";

        // Checks to see if the word "Java" is found in the haystack
        // variable.
        String needle = "Java";
        if (haystack.indexOf(needle) != -1) {
            System.out.println("Found the word " + needle +
                    " at index number " + haystack.indexOf(needle));
        } else {
            System.out.println("Can't find " + needle);
        }

        // Or use the String.contains() method if you are not interested
        // with the index of the word.
        if (haystack.contains(needle)) {
            System.out.println("Eureka we've found Java!");
        }
    }
}

Running the example gave you the following result:

Found the word Java at index number 17
Eureka we've found Java!