How to Remove All Non-alphanumeric Characters From a String in Java?

‍Given: A string containing some ASCII characters.

Task: To remove all non-alphanumeric characters in the given string and print the modified string.

In this article, we’ll explore:

• What are Alphanumeric and Non-alphanumeric Characters?
• How to Remove Non-alphanumeric Characters in Java:
  Method 1: Using ASCII values
  Method 2: Using String.replace()
  Method 3: Using String.replaceAll() and Regular Expression

What Are Alphanumeric and Non-alphanumeric Characters?

Alpha stands for alphabets, and numeric stands for a number. So, alphabets and numbers are alphanumeric characters, and the rest are non-alphanumeric.

Examples of alphanumeric characters: ‘a’, ‘A’, ‘p’, ‘2’

Examples of non-alphanumeric characters: ‘!’, ‘{‘, ‘&’ 

Examples

• Example 1:

Input: Interview!@Kickstart23

Output: InterviewKickstart23

Here the symbols ‘!’ and ‘@’ are non-alphanumeric, so we removed them.

• Example 2:

Input: Interview_{@Kick}start

Output: InterviewKickstart

Here the symbols ‘_’, ‘{’, ‘}’ and ‘@’ are non-alphanumeric, so we removed them.

• Example 3:

Input: InterviewKickstart23

Output: InterviewKickstart23

Here, there’s no need to remove any characters because all of them are alphanumeric.

How to Remove Non-alphanumeric Characters in Java?

To remove non-alphanumeric characters in a given string in Java, we have three methods; let’s see them one by one.

Method 1: Using ASCII values

If we see the ASCII table, characters from ‘a’ to ‘z’ lie in the range 65 to 90. Characters from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ lie in the range 97 to 122, and digits from ‘0’ to ‘9’ lie in the range 48 to 57.

Thus, we can differentiate between alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric characters by their ASCII values.

In this method, we’ll make an empty string object, traverse our input string and fetch the ASCII value of each character. If the ASCII value is in the above ranges, we append that character to our empty string. Else, we move to the next character.

After iterating over the string, we update our string to the new string we created earlier.

Code:

/*

Java program to remove non-alphanumeric characters with

Method 1: Using ASCII values

*/

public class Main {

 

// Function to remove the non-alphanumeric characters and print the resultant string

public static String rmvNonalphnum(String s)

{

String temp = “”;

for(int i=0;i<s.length();i++)

{

// current character

char c = s.charAt(i);

 

// get the ascii value of current character

int ascii = (int)c;

 

// check if the ascii value in our ranges of alphanumeric and if yes then print the character

if((ascii>=65 && ascii<=90) || (ascii>=97 && ascii<=122) || (ascii>=48 && ascii<=57))

{

temp+=c;

}

 

}

return temp;

}

 

// Driver Code

public static void main(String args[])

{

// Test Case 1:

String s1  = “Interview!@Kickstart23”;

// calling the function

s1 = rmvNonalphnum(s1);

System.out.println(s1);

 

// Test Case 2:

String s2 = “Interview_{@Kick}start”;

// calling the function

s2 = rmvNonalphnum(s2);

System.out.println(s2);

 

// Test Case 3:

String s3  = “InterviewKickstart23”;

// calling the function

s3 = rmvNonalphnum(s3);

System.out.println(s3);

}

}

Method 2: Using String.replace()

In this approach, we use the replace() method in the Java String class. We use this method to replace all occurrences of a particular character with some new character.

About String.replace()

• Syntax:

public String replace(char a, char b)

• Parameters:

a: old character that we need to replace.

b: new character which needs to replace the old character.

• Return Value:

Resultant string after replacements.

In this approach, we loop over the string and find whether the current character is non-alphanumeric or not using its ASCII value (as we have already done in the last method). If it is non-alphanumeric, we replace all its occurrences with empty characters using the String.replace() method.

Code:

/*

Java program to remove non-alphanumeric characters with

Method 2: Using String.replace()

*/

public class Main {

 

// Function to remove the non-alphanumeric characters and print the resultant string

public static String rmvNonalphnum(String s)

{

for(int i=0;i<s.length();i++)

{

// current character

char c = s.charAt(i);

 

// get the ascii value of current character

int ascii = (int)c;

 

// check if the current character is non-alphanumeric if yes then replace it’s all occurrences with empty char (‘�’)

if(!((ascii>=65 && ascii<=90) || (ascii>=97 && ascii<=122) || (ascii>=48 && ascii<=57)))

{

s = s.replace(c,’�’);

}

}

// returning the resultant string

return s;

}

 

// Driver Code

public static void main(String args[])

{

// Test Case 1:

String s1  = “Interview!@Kickstart23”;

// calling the function

s1 = rmvNonalphnum(s1);

System.out.println(s1);

 

// Test Case 1:

String s2 = “Interview_{@Kick}start”;

// calling the function

s2 = rmvNonalphnum(s2);

System.out.println(s2);

 

// Test Case 1:

String s3  = “InterviewKickstart23”;

// calling the function

s3 = rmvNonalphnum(s3);

System.out.println(s3);

}

}

Method 3: Using String.replaceAll() and Regular Expression

In this approach, we use the replaceAll() method in the Java String class. This method returns the string after replacing each substring that matches a given regular expression with a given replace string.

About String.replaceAll()

• Syntax:

public String replaceAll(String rgx, String replaceStr)

• Parameters:

replaceStr: the string which would replace the found expression.

rgx: the regular expression that this string needs to match.

• Return Value

Resultant string after replacements.

So, we use this method to replace the non-alphanumeric characters with an empty string.

• Our regular expression will be: [^a-zA-Z0-9]. This means, “only consider pattern substring with characters ranging from ‘a’ to ‘z’, ‘A’ to ‘Z’ and ‘0’ to ‘9’.”
• Replacement String will be: “” (empty string)
• Here ^ Matches the beginning of the input: It means, “replace all substrings with pattern [^a-zA-Z0-9] with the empty string.”

Code:

/*

Java program to remove non-alphanumeric characters with

Method 2: Using String.replace()

*/

public class Main {

 

// Function to remove the non-alphanumeric characters and print the resultant string

public static void rmvNonalphnum(String s)

{

// replacing all substring patterns of non-alphanumeric characters with empty string

s = s.replaceAll(“[^a-zA-Z0-9]”, “”);

 

}

 

// Driver Code

public static void main(String args[])

{

// Test Case 1:

String s1  = “Interview!@Kickstart23”;

// calling the function

rmvNonalphnum(s1);

System.out.println(s1);

 

// Test Case 1:

String s2 = “Interview_{@Kick}start”;

// calling the function

rmvNonalphnum(s2);

System.out.println(s2);

 

// Test Case 1:

String s3  = “InterviewKickstart23”;

// calling the function

rmvNonalphnum(s3);

System.out.println(s3);

}

}

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Article contributed by Omkar Deshmukh