Simple way to repeat a string

Question

I\'m looking for a simple commons method or operator that allows me to repeat some string n times. I know I could write this using a for loop, but I wish to avoid f

Answer 1

using only JRE classes (System.arraycopy) and trying to minimize the number of temp objects you can write something like:

public static String repeat(String toRepeat, int times) {
    if (toRepeat == null) {
        toRepeat = "";
    }

    if (times < 0) {
        times = 0;
    }

    final int length = toRepeat.length();
    final int total = length * times;
    final char[] src = toRepeat.toCharArray();
    char[] dst = new char[total];

    for (int i = 0; i < total; i += length) {
        System.arraycopy(src, 0, dst, i, length);
    }

    return String.copyValueOf(dst);
}

EDIT

and without loops you can try with:

public static String repeat2(String toRepeat, int times) {
    if (toRepeat == null) {
        toRepeat = "";
    }

    if (times < 0) {
        times = 0;
    }

    String[] copies = new String[times];
    Arrays.fill(copies, toRepeat);
    return Arrays.toString(copies).
              replace("[", "").
              replace("]", "").
              replaceAll(", ", "");
}

EDIT 2

using Collections is even shorter:

public static String repeat3(String toRepeat, int times) {
    return Collections.nCopies(times, toRepeat).
           toString().
           replace("[", "").
           replace("]", "").
           replaceAll(", ", "");
}

however I still like the first version.