CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaregexparsing
wtsang02
wtsang02

Reputation: 18863

trim all 'spaces' from String

I am parsing a PDF and getting a lot of Strings with \t, \r, \n,\s... And they appear on both ends of the String and don't appear in order. So I can have
ex:

"\t\s\t\nSome important data I need surrounded by useless data \r\t\s\s\r\t\t"

. Is there any efficient ways to trim these Strings? What I have so far which isn't good enough because I want some symbols.:

public static String trimToLetters(String sourceString) {
        int beginIndex = 0;
        int endIndex = sourceString.length() - 1;
        Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[A-Z_a-z\\;\\.\\(\\)\\*\\?\\:\\\"\\']");
        Matcher matcher = p.matcher(sourceString);
        if (matcher.find()) {
            if (matcher.start() >= 0) {
                beginIndex = matcher.start();
                StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(sourceString);
                String sourceReverse = sb.reverse().toString();
                matcher = p.matcher(sourceReverse);
                if (matcher.find()) {
                    endIndex = sourceString.length() - matcher.start();
                }
            }
        }
        return sourceString.substring(beginIndex, endIndex);
    }

Upvotes: 1

Views: 409

Answers (1)

Sergey Kalinichenko
Sergey Kalinichenko

Reputation: 726579

The trim method of the String should be able to remove all whitespace from both ends of the string:

trim: Returns a copy of the string, with leading and trailing whitespace omitted.

P.S. \s is not a valid escape sequence in Java.

Upvotes: 6

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