Java equivalent for Python's str.strip()

Question

Suppose I would like to remove all " surrounding a string. In Python, I would:

>>> s='"Don\'t need the quotes"'
>>> print s
"Don't need the quotes"
>>> print s.strip('"')
Don't need the quotes

And if I want to remove multiple characters, e.g. " and parentheses:

>> s='"(Don\'t need quotes and parens)"'
>>> print s
"(Don't need quotes and parens)"
>>> print s.strip('"()')
Don't need quotes and parens

What's the elegant way to strip a string in Java?

Answer 1

Suppose I would like to remove all " surrounding a string

The closest equivalent to the Python code is:

s = s.replaceAll("^\"+", "").replaceAll("\"+$", "");

And if I want to remove multiple characters, e.g. " and parentheses:

s = s.replaceAll("^[\"()]+", "").replaceAll("[\"()]+$", "");

If you can use Apache Commons Lang, there's StringUtils.strip().

Answer 2

The Guava library has a handy utility for it. The library contains CharMatcher.trimFrom(), which does what you want. You just need to create a CharMatcher which matches the characters you want to remove.

Code:

CharMatcher matcher = CharMatcher.is('"');
System.out.println(matcher.trimFrom(s));

CharMatcher matcher2 = CharMatcher.anyOf("\"()");
System.out.println(matcher2.trimFrom(s));

Internally, this does not create any new String, but just calls s.subSequence(). As it also doesn't need Regexps, I guess its the fastest solution (and surely the cleanest and easiest to understand).