How do I get the first n characters of a string without checking the size or going out of bounds?

Question

How do I get up to the first n characters of a string in Java without doing a size check first (inline is acceptable) or risking an IndexOutOfBoundsExcept

Answer 1

String upToNCharacters = String.format("%."+ n +"s", str);

Awful if n is a variable (so you must construct the format string), but pretty clear if a constant:

String upToNCharacters = String.format("%.10s", str);

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