Limiting and formatting a JTextfield
I have a JTextfield where a user enters a "social security number". The SSN has 9 digits and 2 dashes for a total of 11 characters. How do I limit the JTextField to 11 characters and also have 2 dashes in the textfield at the 4 th and 7 th position of the 11 characters? You might want to use : JFormattedTextField See this for more help : How to Use Formatted Text Fields Also this might help : MaskFormatter Here is a sample snippet : MaskFormatter formatter = new MaskFormatter("####-###-####"); EDIT : After some research I found out that a DocumentFilter would do things better, See this for