Ignoring diacritic characters when comparing words with special characters (é, è, …)

Question

I have a list with some Belgian cities with diacritic characters: (Liège, Quiévrain, Franière, etc.) and I would like to transform these special characters to compare with a lis

Answer 1

The Collator class is a good way to do it (see corresponding javadoc). Here is a unit test that shows how to use it :

import static org.junit.Assert.assertEquals;

import java.text.Collator;
import java.util.Locale;

import org.junit.Test;

public class CollatorTest {
    @Test public void liege() throws Exception {
        Collator compareOperator = Collator.getInstance(Locale.FRENCH);
        compareOperator.setStrength(Collator.PRIMARY);

        assertEquals(0, compareOperator.compare("Liege", "Liege")); // no accent
        assertEquals(0, compareOperator.compare("Liège", "Liege")); // with accent
        assertEquals(0, compareOperator.compare("LIEGE", "Liege")); // case insensitive
        assertEquals(0, compareOperator.compare("LIEGE", "Liège")); // case insensitive with accent

        assertEquals(1, compareOperator.compare("Liege", "Bruxelles"));
        assertEquals(-1, compareOperator.compare("Bruxelles", "Liege"));
    }
}

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EDIT : sorry to see my answer did not meet your needs ; maybe it's beause I've presented it as unit test ? Is this ok for you ? I personnaly find it better because it's short and it uses the SDK (no need for String replacement)

Collator compareOperator = Collator.getInstance(Locale.FRENCH);
compareOperator.setStrength(Collator.PRIMARY);
if (compareOperator.compare("Liège", "Liege") == 0) {
    // if we are here, then it's the "same" String
}

hope this helps