How To Remove a Character from a String in Java

Introduction

In this article, you’ll learn a few different ways to remove a character from a String object in Java. Although the String class doesn’t have a remove() method, you can use variations of the replace() method and the substring() method to remove characters from strings.

The String class has the following methods that you can use to replace or remove characters:

• replace(char oldChar, char newChar): Returns a new String object that replaces all of the occurrences of oldChar in the given string with newChar. You can also use the replace() method, in the format replace(CharSequence target, CharSequence replacement), to return a new String object that replaces a substring in the given string.
• replaceFirst(String regex, String replacement): Returns a new String object that replaces the first substring that matches the regular expression in the given string with the replacement.
• replaceAll(String regex, String replacement): Returns a new String object that replaces each substring that matches the regular expression in the given string with the replacement.
• substring(int start, int end): Returns a new String object that contains a subsequence of characters currently contained in this sequence. The substring begins at the specified start and extends to the character at index end minus 1.

Notice that the first argument for the replaceAll() and replaceFirst() methods is a regular expression. You can use a regular expression to remove a pattern from a string.

Remove a Character from a String in Java

You can remove all instances of a character from a string in Java by using the replace() method to replace the character with an empty string. The following example code removes all of the occurrences of lowercase “a” from the given string:

String str = "abc ABC 123 abc";
String strNew = str.replace("a", "");

Output
bc ABC 123 bc

Remove Spaces from a String in Java

You can remove spaces from a string in Java by using the replace() method to replace the spaces with an empty string. The following example code removes all of the spaces from the given string:

String str = "abc ABC 123 abc";
String strNew = str.replace(" ", "");

Output
abcABC123abc

Remove a Substring from a String in Java

You can remove only the first occurrence of a character or substring from a string in Java by using the replaceFirst() method to replace the character or substring with an empty string. The following example code removes the first occurrence of “ab” from the given string:

String str = "abc ABC 123 abc";
String strNew = str.replaceFirst("ab", "");

Output
c ABC 123 abc

Remove all the Lowercase Letters from a String in Java

You can use a regular expression to remove characters that match a given pattern from a string in Java by using the replace.All() method to replace the characters with an empty string. The following example code removes all of the lowercase letters from the given string:

String str = "abc ABC 123 abc";
String strNew = str.replaceAll("([a-z])", "");

Output
ABC 123

Remove the Last Character from a String in Java

There is no specific method to replace or remove the last character from a string, but you can use the String substring() method to truncate the string. The following example code removes the last character from the given string:

String str = "abc ABC 123 abc";
String strNew = str.substring(0, str.length()-1);

Output
abc ABC 123 ab

Try it out

The following example file defines a class that includes all of the method examples provided in this article, and prints out the results after invoking each method on the given string. You can use this example code to try it out yourself on different strings using different matching patterns and replacement values.

If you have Java installed, you can create a new file called JavaStringRemove.java and add the following code to the file:

public class JavaStringRemove {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
    	String str = "abc ABC 123 abc";

		// Remove a character from a string in Java
		System.out.println("String after removing all the 'a's = "+str.replace("a", ""));

		// Remove spaces from a string in Java
		System.out.println("String after removing all the spaces = "+str.replace(" ", ""));

		// Remove a substring from a string in Java	
		System.out.println("String after removing the first 'ab' substring = "+str.replaceFirst("ab", ""));

		// Remove all the lowercase letters from a string in Java
		System.out.println("String after removing all the lowercase letters = "+str.replaceAll("([a-z])", ""));

		// Remove the last character from a string in Java
		System.out.println("String after removing the last character = "+str.substring(0, str.length()-1));
	}

}

Compile and run the program:

javac JavaStringRemove.java
java JavaStringRemove

You get the following output:

Output
String after removing all the 'a's = bc ABC 123 bc
String after removing all the spaces = abcABC123abc
String after removing the first 'ab' substring = c ABC 123 abc
String after removing all the lowercase letters =  ABC 123
String after removing the last character = abc ABC 123 ab

Each method in the JavaStringRemove example class operates on the given string. The output shows that the characters specified in each method have been removed from the string.

Conclusion

In this article you learned various ways to remove characters from strings in Java using methods from the String class, including replace(), replaceAll(), replaceFirst(), and substring(). Continue your learning with more Java tutorials.