Java
Strings
String related classes
• Java provides four String related classes
• [Link] package
– String class: Storing and processing Strings but Strings
created using the String class cannot be modified
(immutable)
– StringBuffer/StringBuilder class: Create flexible Strings
that can be modified
• [Link] package
– StringTokenizer class: Can be used to extract tokens from a
String
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String
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String
• String class provide many constructors and more
than 40 methods for examining in individual
characters in a sequence
• You can create a String from a String value or from an
array of characters.
– String newString = new String(stringValue);
• The argument stringValue is a sequence of characters
enclosed inside double quotes
– String message = new String (“Welcome”);
– String message = “Welcome”;
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String Constructors
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String Length
• Returns the length of a String
– length()
• Example:
String s1=“Hello”;
[Link]([Link]());
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Extraction
• Get the character at a specific location in a string
– [Link](1)
• Get the entire set of characters in a string
– [Link](0, 5, charArray, 0)
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Extracting Substrings
• substring method enable a new String object to be
created by copying part of an existing String object
– substring (int startIndex) ‐ copies the characters form the
starting index to the end of the String
– substring(int beginIndex, int endIndex) ‐ copies the
characters from the starting index to one beyond the
endIndex
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String Comparisons
• equals
– Compare any two string objects for equality using
lexicographical comparison. [Link](“hello”)
• equalsIgnoreCase
– [Link](s2)
• compareTo
– [Link](s2)
– s1 > s2 (positive), s1 < s2 (negative), s1 = s2 (zero)
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String Comparisons
For details have a look at section 1-4 from [Link]
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String Comparisons
• regionMatches compares portions of two String
objects for equality
– [Link] (0, s2, 0, 5)
– [Link] (true, 0, s2, 0, 5)
• If the first argument is true, the method ignores the
case of the characters being compared
• startsWith and endsWith check whether a String
starts or ends with a specified String
– [Link] (s2)
– [Link] (s2)
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String Concatenation
• Java provide the concat method to concatenate two
strings.
String s1 = new String (“Happy ”);
String s2 = new String (“Birthday”);
String s3 = [Link](s2);
s3 will be “Happy Birthday”
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String Search
• Find the position of character/String within a String
– int indexOf(char ch)
– int lastIndexOf(char ch)
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String Split
• split() method splits a String against given regular
expression and returns a character array
• String test = "abc,def,123";
String[] out = [Link](",");
out[0] - abc, out[1] - def, out[2] - 123
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String Conversions
• Generally, the contents of a String cannot be
changed once the string is created,
• Java provides conversion methods
• toUpperCase() and toLowerCase()
– Converts all the characters in the string to lowercase or
uppercase
• trim()
– Eliminates blank characters from both ends of the string
• replace(oldChar, newChar)
– Replaces a character in the string with a new character
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String to Other Conversions
• The String class provides valueOf methods for
converting a character, an array of characters and
numeric values to strings
– valueOf method take different argument types
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String to Other Conversions
Type To String From String
boolean [Link](boolean) [Link](String)
byte [Link](int) [Link](String, int base)
short [Link](int) [Link] (String, int base)
Int [Link](int) [Link] (String, int base)
long [Link](long) [Link] (String, int base)
float [Link](float) [Link](String)
double [Link](double) [Link](String)
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String Conversion Example
• To convert an int to a String (3 different ways):
int n = 123;
String s1 = [Link](n);
String s2 = [Link](n);
String s3 = n + "";
• To convert a string to an int:
String s = “1234”;
int n = [Link](s);
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StringBuffer/StringBuilder
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StringBuffer
• Can be used wherever a string is used
– More flexible than String
– Can add, insert, or append new contents into a string
buffer
• The StringBuffer class has three constructors and
more than 30 methods for managing the buffer and
for modifying strings in the buffer
• Every StringBuffer is capable of storing a number of
characters specified by its capacity
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StringBuffer Constructors
• public StringBuffer()
– No characters in it and an initial capacity of 16 characters
• public StringBuffer(int length)
– No characters in it and an initial capacity specified by the
length argument
• public StringBuffer(String string)
– Contains String argument and an initial capacity of the
buffer is 16 plus the length of the argument
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StringBuilder
• The functionalities of StringBuilder is the same as
StringBuffer, but StringBuilder is faster
• StringBuffer is synchronized, StringBuilder is not
• StringBuffer came first
– Sun was concerned with correctness under all conditions,
they made it synchronized to make thread-safe just in case
• StringBuilder came later
– Drop-in replacement for StringBuffer without the
synchronization, not thread-safe
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StringBuffer/StringBuilder
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StringTokenizer
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StringTokenizer
• Break a string into pieces (tokens) so that contained
information can be retrieved and processed
• Specify a set of characters as delimiters when
constructing a StringTokenizer object
• StringTokenizer class is available since JDK 1.0 and
the [Link]() is available since JDK 1.4
• [Link]() does produce empty tokens, but
StringTokenizer doesn't
• StringTokenizer is a legacy class, retained for
compatibility reasons, the use is discouraged!
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StringTokenizer
• Constructors
– StringTokenizer(String str, String delim)
– StringTokenizer(String str)
• Methods
– hasMoreToken() ‐ Returns true if there is a token left in the
string
– nextToken() ‐ Returns the next token in the string
– nextToken(String delim) ‐ Returns the next token in the
string after reseting the delimiter to delim
– countToken( ) ‐ Returns the number of tokens remaining in
the string tokenizer
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StringTokenizer
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