Remove Null Value from String array in java

Question

How to remove null value from String array in java?

String[] firstArray = {"test1","","test2","test4",""}; 

I need the "firstArray" without null ( empty) values like this

String[] firstArray = {"test1","test2","test4"}; 

Answer 1

If you actually want to add/remove items from an array, may I suggest a List instead?

String[] firstArray = {"test1","","test2","test4",""}; ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(); for (String s : firstArray)     if (!s.equals(""))         list.add(s); 

Then, if you really need to put that back into an array:

firstArray = list.toArray(new String[list.size()]); 

Answer 2

If you want to avoid fencepost errors and avoid moving and deleting items in an array, here is a somewhat verbose solution that uses List:

import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.List;  public class RemoveNullValue {   public static void main( String args[] ) {     String[] firstArray = {"test1", "", "test2", "test4", "", null};      List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();      for(String s : firstArray) {        if(s != null && s.length() > 0) {           list.add(s);        }     }      firstArray = list.toArray(new String[list.size()]);   } } 

Added null to show the difference between an empty String instance ("") and null.

Since this answer is around 4.5 years old, I'm adding a Java 8 example:

import java.util.Arrays; import java.util.stream.Collectors;  public class RemoveNullValue {     public static void main( String args[] ) {         String[] firstArray = {"test1", "", "test2", "test4", "", null};          firstArray = Arrays.stream(firstArray)                      .filter(s -> (s != null && s.length() > 0))                      .toArray(String[]::new);          } }