Is there a way to get rid of accents and convert a whole string to regular letters?

Question

Is there a better way for getting rid of accents and making those letters regular apart from using String.replaceAll() method and replacing letters one by one?

Answer 1

As of 2011 you can use Apache Commons StringUtils.stripAccents(input) (since 3.0):

    String input = StringUtils.stripAccents("Tĥïŝ ĩš â fůňķŷ Šťŕĭńġ");
    System.out.println(input);
    // Prints "This is a funky String"

Note:

The accepted answer (Erick Robertson's) doesn't work for Ø or Ł. Apache Commons 3.5 doesn't work for Ø either, but it does work for Ł. After reading the Wikipedia article for Ø, I'm not sure it should be replaced with "O": it's a separate letter in Norwegian and Danish, alphabetized after "z". It's a good example of the limitations of the "strip accents" approach.