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

I have faced the same issue related to Strings equality check, One of the comparing string has ASCII character code 128-255.

i.e., Non-breaking space - [Hex - A0] Space [Hex - 20]. To show Non-breaking space over HTML. I have used the following spacing entities. Their character and its bytes are like &emsp is very wide space[ ]{-30, -128, -125}, &ensp is somewhat wide space[ ]{-30, -128, -126}, &thinsp is narrow space[ ]{32} , Non HTML Space {}

String s1 = "My Sample Space Data", s2 = "My Sample Space Data";
System.out.format("S1: %s\n", java.util.Arrays.toString(s1.getBytes()));
System.out.format("S2: %s\n", java.util.Arrays.toString(s2.getBytes()));

Output in Bytes:

S1: [77, 121, 32, 83, 97, 109, 112, 108, 101, 32, 83, 112, 97, 99, 101, 32, 68, 97, 116, 97] S2: [77, 121, -30, -128, -125, 83, 97, 109, 112, 108, 101, -30, -128, -125, 83, 112, 97, 99, 101, -30, -128, -125, 68, 97, 116, 97]

Use below code for Different Spaces and their Byte-Codes: wiki for List_of_Unicode_characters

String spacing_entities = "very wide space,narrow space,regular space,invisible separator";
System.out.println("Space String :"+ spacing_entities);
byte[] byteArray = 
    // spacing_entities.getBytes( Charset.forName("UTF-8") );
    // Charset.forName("UTF-8").encode( s2 ).array();
    {-30, -128, -125, 44, -30, -128, -126, 44, 32, 44, -62, -96};
System.out.println("Bytes:"+ Arrays.toString( byteArray ) );
try {
    System.out.format("Bytes to String[%S] \n ", new String(byteArray, "UTF-8"));
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

• ➩ ASCII transliterations of Unicode string for Java. unidecode

  String initials = Unidecode.decode( s2 );
  

• ➩ using Guava: Google Core Libraries for Java.

  String replaceFrom = CharMatcher.WHITESPACE.replaceFrom( s2, " " );
  

  For URL encode for the space use Guava laibrary.

  String encodedString = UrlEscapers.urlFragmentEscaper().escape(inputString);
  

• ➩ To overcome this problem used String.replaceAll() with some RegularExpression.

  // \p{Z} or \p{Separator}: any kind of whitespace or invisible separator.
  s2 = s2.replaceAll("\\p{Zs}", " ");
  
  
  s2 = s2.replaceAll("[^\\p{ASCII}]", " ");
  s2 = s2.replaceAll(" ", " ");
  

• ➩ Using java.text.Normalizer.Form. This enum provides constants of the four Unicode normalization forms that are described in Unicode Standard Annex #15 — Unicode Normalization Forms and two methods to access them.

  s2 = Normalizer.normalize(s2, Normalizer.Form.NFKC);
  

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Testing String and outputs on different approaches like ➩ Unidecode, Normalizer, StringUtils.

String strUni = "Tĥïŝ ĩš â fůňķŷ Šťŕĭńġ Æ,Ø,Ð,ß";

// This is a funky String AE,O,D,ss
String initials = Unidecode.decode( strUni );

// Following Produce this o/p: Tĥïŝ ĩš â fůňķŷ Šťŕĭńġ Æ,Ø,Ð,ß
String temp = Normalizer.normalize(strUni, Normalizer.Form.NFD);
Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\p{InCombiningDiacriticalMarks}+");
temp = pattern.matcher(temp).replaceAll("");

String input = org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils.stripAccents( strUni );

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Using Unidecode is the best choice, My final Code shown below.

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String s1 = "My Sample Space Data", s2 = "My Sample Space Data";
    String initials = Unidecode.decode( s2 );
    if( s1.equals(s2)) { //[ , ] %A0 - %2C - %20 « http://www.ascii-code.com/
        System.out.println("Equal Unicode Strings");
    } else if( s1.equals( initials ) ) {
        System.out.println("Equal Non Unicode Strings");
    } else {
        System.out.println("Not Equal");
    }

}