Converting Java String to ascii

Question

I need to convert Strings that consists of some letters specific to certain languages (like HÄSTDJUR - note Ä) to a String without those special letters (in this case HASTDJUR). How can I do it in Java? Thanks for help!

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It is not really about how it sounds. The scenario is following - you want to use the application, but don't have the Swedish keyboard. So instead of looking at the character map, you type it by replacing special letters with the typical letters from the latin alphabet.

Answer 1

I'd suggest a mapping, of special characters, to the ones you want.

Ä --> A
é --> e
A --> A (exactly the same)
etc...

And then you can just call your mapping over your text (in pseudocode):

for letter in string:
   newString += map(letter)

Effectively, you need to create a set of rules for what character maps to the ASCII equivalent.

Answer 2

I think your question is the same as this one:

Java - getting rid of accents and converting them to regular letters

and hence the answer is also the same:

String convertedString = 
       Normalizer
           .normalize(input, Normalizer.Form.NFD)
           .replaceAll("[^\\p{ASCII}]", "");

See

• JavaDoc: Normalizer.normalize(String, Normalizer.Form)
• JavaDoc: Normalizer.Form.NFD
• Sun Java Tutorial: Normalizer's API)

Example Code:

final String input = "Tĥïŝ ĩš â fůňķŷ Šťŕĭńġ";
System.out.println(
    Normalizer
        .normalize(input, Normalizer.Form.NFD)
        .replaceAll("[^\\p{ASCII}]", "")
);

Output:

This is a funky String