How to swap String characters in Java?

Question

How can I swap two characters in a String? For example, \"abcde\" will become \"bacde\".

Answer 1

Here's a solution with a StringBuilder. It supports padding resulting strings with uneven string length with a padding character. As you've guessed this method is made for hexadecimal-nibble-swapping.

/**
 * Swaps every character at position i with the character at position i + 1 in the given
 * string.
 */
public static String swapCharacters(final String value, final boolean padding)
{
   if ( value == null )
   {
      return null;
   }

   final StringBuilder stringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
   int posA = 0;
   int posB = 1;
   final char padChar = 'F';

   // swap characters
   while ( posA < value.length() && posB < value.length() )
   {
      stringBuilder.append( value.charAt( posB ) ).append( value.charAt( posA ) );
      posA += 2;
      posB += 2;
   }

   // if resulting string is still smaller than original string we missed the last
   // character
   if ( stringBuilder.length() < value.length() )
   {
      stringBuilder.append( value.charAt( posA ) );
   }

   // add the padding character for uneven strings
   if ( padding && value.length() % 2 != 0 )
   {
      stringBuilder.append( padChar );
   }

   return stringBuilder.toString();
}