Remove special characters in the string in java?

Question

How to remove special characters in the string except \"- _\". Now I use:

replaceAll(\"[^\\\\w\\\\s]\", \"\")

it remove all special charact

Answer 1

Pattern pt = Pattern.compile("[^a-zA-Z0-9_-]");
    Matcher match = pt.matcher(c);
    while (match.find()) {
        String s = match.group();
        c = c.replaceAll("\\" + s, "");
    }

Consider this

Answer 2

Use this replaceAll("[\\w\\s\\-\\_\\<.*?>]", "") ;

Answer 3

I suspect that you need to assign the result (in case you're not doing that), because replaceAll() returns a new string, rather than updating the string (String is immutable):

str = str.replaceAll("[^\\w\\s-]", "");

Also note that the regex is quite simple:

No need to escape the dash - in the character class: When used as a literal in a character class, it must be either first or last (otherwise it indicates a range, like a-z etc).

No need to mention the underscore at all, because it is already listed: \w includes the underscore character!

Answer 4

String str="owl@134_- abc";
String s=str.replaceAll(" [^a-zA-Z_-]+ ", "");
System.out.println(str);

It will replace the special character and white spaces from a given string.

Output will be: owlabc_-

Answer 5

barely 6 years have passed and we have a lambda solution

String str = "owl@134_- abc";
str.codePoints().mapToObj( Character::toChars ).filter(
    a -> (a.length == 1 && (Character.isLetterOrDigit( a[0] ) || a[0] == '-' || a[0] == '_')) )
  .collect( StringBuilder::new, StringBuilder::append, StringBuilder::append ).toString(); // owl134_-abc

Answer 6

This might help:

replaceAll("[^a-zA-Z0-9_-]", "");