Normalize a string except ñ

Question

I have the following example code:

String n = "Péña";
n = Normalizer.normalize(n, Normalizer.Form.NFC);

How do I normalize the string n excepting the ñ?

And not only that string, I'm making a form and I want to keep just the ñ's, and everything else without diacritics.

Just `normalize` and then change back the normalied `n~` to `ñ`. — Jongware, Mar 19 '16 at 10:48

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:15

Replace all occurrences of "ñ" with a non-printable character "\001", so "Péña" becomes "Pé\001a". Then call Normalizer.normalize() to decompose the "é" into "e" and a separate diacritical mark. Finally remove the diacritical marks, and convert the non-printable character back to "ñ".

String partiallyNormalize(String string)
{
    string = string.replace('ñ', '\001');
    string = Normalizer.normalize(string, Normalizer.Form.NFD);
    string = string.replaceAll("[\\p{InCombiningDiacriticalMarks}]", "");
    string = string.replace('\001', 'ñ');
    return string;
}

You might also want to upvote the preferred answer to Easy way to remove UTF-8 accents from a string?, where I learned how to remove the diacritical marks.

Normalize a string except ñ

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