Remove special characters from a String in Java

In this tutorial, we will learn how to remove special characters from a string in java. For example, if the given string is “Hello @ World” then the output will be “Hello World”.

In order to remove special characters, we can use regex along with the replaceAll() method.

Java Program to remove special characters from a String

public class RemoveSpecialCharacters {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        //given string
        String input = "Hello! How are you? #Good -morning!";

        //calling the user defined method for removing special chars
        String result = removeSpecialCharacters(input);
        System.out.println("Original: " + input);
        System.out.println("After removing special characters: " + result);
    }

    public static String removeSpecialCharacters(String str) {
        // This regular expression matches all special characters
        // [^a-zA-Z0-9\\s] matches any character that is not an 
        // uppercase letter, lowercase letter, digit, or whitespace.
        String regex = "[^a-zA-Z0-9\\s]";
        
        // Replace all special characters with an empty string
        // Note: There is no space between double quotes
        return str.replaceAll(regex, "");
    }
}

Output

Original: Hello! How are you? #Good -morning!
After removing special characters: Hello How are you Good morning

Points to Note:

• You can adjust the regular expression to match specific types of special characters based on your requirements. Refer regex tutorial.
• If you want to remove whitespace from the string, you can use trim() method. Refer: trim() method and remove whitespace from string.