removing white spaces from string value

Question

i have a link http://localhost:8080/reporting/pvsUsageAction.do?form_action=inline_audit_view&days=7&projectStatus=scheduled&justificationId=5&justificationName= No Technicians in Area in my struts based web application.

The variable in URL justificationName have some spaces before its vales as shown. when i get value of justificationName using request.getParameter("justificationName") it gives me that value with spaces as given in the URL. i want to remove those spaces. i tried trim() i tries str = str.replace(" ", ""); but any of them did not removed those spaces. can any one tell some other way to remove the space.

Noted one more thing that i did right click on the link and opened the link into new tab there i noticed that link looks like.

http://localhost:8080/reporting/pvsUsageAction.do?form_action=inline_audit_view&days=7&projectStatus=scheduled&justificationId=5&justificationName=%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0No%20Technicians%20in%20Area

Notable point is that in the address bar it shows %A0 for white spaces and also show %20 for space as well see the link and tell the difference please if any one have idea about it.

EDIT Here is my code

String justificationCode = "";
        if (request.getParameter("justificationName") != null) {            
            justificationCode = request.getParameter("justificationName");
        }
        justificationCode = justificationCode.replace(" ", "");

Note: replace function remove the space from inside the string but not removing starting spaces. e-g if my string is " This is string" after using replace it becomes " Thisisstring"

Thanks in advance

Did you use the *return value* of those methods? If you don't, then you're doing it wrong. — Joachim Sauer, May 21 '13 at 13:18
you have to assign the result of the operation to another variable. See the Javadoc for the `replace()` method. It returns another `String`. — Konstantin Yovkov, May 21 '13 at 13:18
Did you assign the return value of `str.replace()` to the original variable? Like `str = str.replace(" ", "");` — LuigiEdlCarno, May 21 '13 at 13:19
Show your code where you remove space and refer this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5455794/removing-whitespace-from-strings-in-java — commit, May 21 '13 at 13:20

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered May 21 '13 at 13:18

5

Strings are immutable in Java, so the method doesn't change the string you pass but returns a new one. You must use the returned value :

str = str.replace(" ", "");

answered May 21 '13 at 13:18

Denys Séguret

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Well. It should. This really removes all standard white space. Your problem might be elsewhere, you should debug step by step to see what happens (or print the string before and after replacement). – Denys Séguret May 21 '13 at 13:21
trim only remove the spaces from the extremities. You'd use it as str = str.trim(); – Denys Séguret May 21 '13 at 13:25

flavian · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-21T13:35:02.187

Manual trim

You need to remove the spaces the string. This will remove any number of consecutive spaces.

String trimmed = str.replaceAll(" +", "");

If you want to replace all whitespace characters:

String trimmed = str.replaceAll("\\s+", "");

URL Encoding

You could also use an URLEncoder, which sounds like a more appropriate way to go:

import java.net.UrlEncoder;
String url = "http://localhost:8080/reporting/" + URLEncoder.encode("pvsUsageAction.do?form_action=inline_audit_view&days=7&projectStatus=scheduled&justificationId=5&justificationName= No Technicians in Area", "ISO-8859-1");

Konstantin Yovkov · Answer 3 · 2013-05-21T13:24:55.137

1

You have to assign the result of the replace(String regex, String replacement) operation to another variable. See the Javadoc for the replace(String regex, String replacement) method. It returns a brand new String object and this is because the String(s) in Java are immutable. In your case, you can simply do the following

String noSpacesString = str.replace("\\s+", "");

edited May 21 '13 at 13:24

answered May 21 '13 at 13:19

Konstantin Yovkov

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 21 '13 at 13:21

0

You can use replaceAll("\\s","") It will remove all white space.

answered May 21 '13 at 13:21

commit

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score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

0

If you are trying to remove the trailing and ending white spaces, then

s = s.trim();

Or if you want to remove all the spaces the use :

s = s.replace(" ","");

edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

Community

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answered May 21 '13 at 13:23

Abubakkar

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score 0 · Answer 6 · edited May 21 '13 at 13:30

0

There are two ways of doing one is regular expression based or your own way of implementing the logic

replaceAll("\\s","")

or

    if (text.contains(" ") || text.contains("\t") || text.contains("\r") 
       || text.contains("\n"))   
    {  
   //code goes here
    }

edited May 21 '13 at 13:30

flavian

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answered May 21 '13 at 13:27

removing white spaces from string value

6 Answers6