How to remove all characters before a specific character in Java?

Question

I have a string and I'm getting value through a html form so when I get the value it comes in a URL so I want to remove all the characters before the specific charater which is = and I also want to remove this character. I only want to save the value that comes after = because I need to fetch that value from the variable..

EDIT : I need to remove the = too since I'm trying to get the characters/value in string after it...

@ItamarGreen I don't know how to do it since I'm a beginner so I searched it up on the internet and I didn't find anything that I could understand so please if you know help me understand it — Shariq Musharaf, Dec 01 '16 at 12:33
Well, you didn't tried anything then ... Please do some research. — AxelH, Dec 01 '16 at 12:35
@AxelH I actually did but it gives me nullpointerexception, if u stop commenting and let me try the answers lol i would be really thankful ill get back to you in a moment — Shariq Musharaf, Dec 01 '16 at 12:36
@AxelH still gives back an array, therefore it does not make any difference — XtremeBaumer, Dec 01 '16 at 12:37
What you really want is parse query parameters. See this question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13592236/parse-a-uri-string-into-name-value-collection — Adriaan Koster, Dec 01 '16 at 12:39
@XtremeBaumer, yes but if you more than one `=` you will split on the first one. You could missed some data if you don't specify this — AxelH, Dec 01 '16 at 12:40
@ShariqMusharaf What you **really** want is to do **much** more learning on java basics. It is a rather bad idea to learn "android" and java at the same time. It rather looks like you are completely overburdening yourself at this point in time. — GhostCat, Dec 01 '16 at 12:49
@GhostCat thx for voting down and I have learned java basics but since I'm doing a revision I have forgot a lot :( — Shariq Musharaf, Dec 01 '16 at 12:55

ItamarG3 · Accepted Answer · 2022-03-12T15:09:49.763

68

You can use .substring():

String s = "the text=text";
String s1 = s.substring(s.indexOf("=") + 1);
s1.trim();

then s1 contains everything after = in the original string.

s1.trim()

.trim() removes spaces before the first character (which isn't a whitespace, such as letters, numbers etc.) of a string (leading spaces) and also removes spaces after the last character (trailing spaces).

edited Mar 12 '22 at 15:09

answered Dec 01 '16 at 12:34

ItamarG3

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If there are multiple `=` you can get the index of the last occurrence with `s.lastIndexOf("=")`. – Irina S. May 18 '22 at 11:58
Just to add, if anyone wants to get the text before =, you can use this: String s1 = s.substring(0, s.indexOf("=")); then s1 contains everything before = in the original string. – Kevin May 24 '22 at 21:51

Murat Karagöz · Answer 2 · 2016-12-01T12:44:58.030

8

While there are many answers. Here is a regex example

String test = "eo21jüdjüqw=realString";
test = test.replaceAll(".+=", "");
System.out.println(test);

// prints realString

Explanation:

.+ matches any character (except for line terminators)
+ Quantifier — Matches between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
= matches the character = literally (case sensitive)

This is also a shady copy paste from https://regex101.com/ where you can try regex out.

edited Dec 01 '16 at 12:44

answered Dec 01 '16 at 12:40

Murat Karagöz

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@ShariqMusharaf It's something I randomly chose. The variable `test` is your html String. – Murat Karagöz Dec 01 '16 at 12:49

Arjun Mehta · Answer 3 · 2016-12-01T12:42:48.537

6

You can split the string from the = and separate in to array and take the second value of the array which you specify as after the = sign For example:

String CurrentString = "Fruit = they taste good"; String[] separated = CurrentString.split("="); separated[0]; // this will contain "Fruit" separated[1]; //this will contain "they teste good"

then separated[1] contains everything after = in the original string.

edited Dec 01 '16 at 12:42

answered Dec 01 '16 at 12:37

Arjun Mehta

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I need to remove the "=" too – Shariq Musharaf Dec 01 '16 at 12:38
yes it will remove that "=" and store it in separated[1] that you exactly want. – Arjun Mehta Dec 01 '16 at 12:45
1

Not everything ! Try this `Op = 4 = 2 + 2` – AxelH Dec 01 '16 at 12:45

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 08 '19 at 09:23

I know this is asked about Java but this seems to also be the first search result for Kotlin so you should know that Kotlin has the String.substringAfter(delimiter: String, missingDelimiterValue: String = this) extension for this case.

Its implementation is:

val index = indexOf(delimiter)
return if (index == -1) 
    missingDelimiterValue 
else 
    substring(index + delimiter.length, length)

рüффп · Answer 5 · 2020-08-28T12:59:21.087

If you use the Apache Commons Lang3 library, you can also use the substringAfter method of the StringUtils utility class.

Official documentation is here.

Examples:

String value = StringUtils.substringAfter("key=value", "=");   

// in this case where a space is in the value (e.g. read from a file instead of a query params)
String value = StringUtils.trimToEmpty(StringUtils.substringAfter("key = value", "="));   // = "value"

It manage the case where your values can contains the '=' character as it takes the first occurence.

If you have keys and values also containing '=' character it will not work (but the other methods as well); in the URL query params, such a character should be escaped anyway.

yogur · Answer 6 · 2016-12-01T12:47:53.750

1

Maybe locate the first occurrence of the character in the URL String. For Example:

String URL = "http://test.net/demo_form.asp?name1=stringTest";

int index = URL.indexOf("=");

Then, split the String based on an index

String Result = URL.substring(index+1); //index+1 to skip =

String Result now contains the value: stringTest

edited Dec 01 '16 at 12:47

answered Dec 01 '16 at 12:41

yogur

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@sha If you don't want to include the "=", simply increment the index by 1. – yogur Dec 01 '16 at 12:46

How to remove all characters before a specific character in Java?

6 Answers6

s1.trim()

Linked