Strip Leading and Trailing Spaces From Java String

Question

Is there a convenience method to strip any leading or trailing spaces from a Java String?

Something like:

String myString = "  keep this  ";
String stripppedString = myString.strip();
System.out.println("no spaces:" + strippedString);

Result:

no spaces:keep this

myString.replace(" ","") would replace the space between keep and this.

Inartificial

It's unfortunate, but it means that the answers here were useful to people. I upvoted for that reason only. – Inchoation

Whilst this may be a duplicate, this is by far a better presented question. If anything, the other should be close as a duplicate of this one. – Entwistle

I switched the duplicates because this Q&A has far more views and favorites, and the other Q&A is actually a debugging question. – Certainty

Made an answer with the solution from JDK/11 API - String.strip to this. – Wivern

Answer 1

You can try the trim() method.

String newString = oldString.trim();

Take a look at javadocs

Commotion

Works as a backward-compatible replacement for Java 11's String.strip(). I haven't had time to explore the subtle differences. – Kassala

Answer 2

Use String#trim() method or String allRemoved = myString.replaceAll("^\\s+|\\s+$", "") for trim both the end.

For left trim:

String leftRemoved = myString.replaceAll("^\\s+", "");

For right trim:

String rightRemoved = myString.replaceAll("\\s+$", "");

Paranoia

This has the added benefit of being able to tell how many leading/trailing spaces there are in the string. – Descent

Answer 3

From the docs:

String.trim();

Strathspey

Answer 4

trim() is your choice, but if you want to use replace method -- which might be more flexiable, you can try the following:

String stripppedString = myString.replaceAll("(^ )|( $)", "");

Industrials

what all does it replace? Spaces and newlines maybe ? – Dichotomy

I was searching for a solution to just remove trailing spaces but not leading spaces. I used: str.replaceAll("\\s*$", "") Thank you! – Maggot

Answer 5

With Java-11 and above, you can make use of the String.strip API to return a string whose value is this string, with all leading and trailing whitespace removed. The javadoc for the same reads :

/**
 * Returns a string whose value is this string, with all leading
 * and trailing {@link Character#isWhitespace(int) white space}
 * removed.
 * <p>
 * If this {@code String} object represents an empty string,
 * or if all code points in this string are
 * {@link Character#isWhitespace(int) white space}, then an empty string
 * is returned.
 * <p>
 * Otherwise, returns a substring of this string beginning with the first
 * code point that is not a {@link Character#isWhitespace(int) white space}
 * up to and including the last code point that is not a
 * {@link Character#isWhitespace(int) white space}.
 * <p>
 * This method may be used to strip
 * {@link Character#isWhitespace(int) white space} from
 * the beginning and end of a string.
 *
 * @return  a string whose value is this string, with all leading
 *          and trailing white space removed
 *
 * @see Character#isWhitespace(int)
 *
 * @since 11
 */
public String strip()

The sample cases for these could be:--

System.out.println("  leading".strip()); // prints "leading"
System.out.println("trailing  ".strip()); // prints "trailing"
System.out.println("  keep this  ".strip()); // prints "keep this"

Wivern

PS: Migrating the answer here based on the comments from - #3796621 – Wivern

Also see Difference between String trim() and strip() methods in Java 11. – Certainty

Answer 6

To trim specific char, you can use:

String s = s.replaceAll("^(,|\\s)*|(,|\\s)*$", "")

Here will strip leading and trailing space and comma.

Laise

Answer 7

s.strip() you can use from java 11 onwards.

s.trim() you can use.

Incautious

Answer 8

private void capitaliseEveryWordInASentence() {

    String mm = "Hello there, this is the cluster";

    String[] words = mm.split(" ");
    String outt = "";

    for (String w : words) {

        outt = outt + Character.toUpperCase(w.charAt(0)) + w.substring(1) + " ";
    }

    System.out.println(outt.trim());
}

Orest

As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please edit to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. – Imagination

Looks like you're answering a totally different question here. – Lysozyme