Remove only leading repeating characters if occurs more than 4 times in string

Question

The repeating characters can be anything [a to z], [0 to 9] or any special characters.

For example:

String a = "CCCCCCgshdbuasvbd";

Consider C = [a to z],[0 to 9], or anything like ~!@#$%*&()_-><?.

I need to remove the "any repeating leading characters in string if that occurs more than 4 times" in the string.

How can I accomplish this using a regex?

Answer 1

You can use:

str = str.replaceAll("^(\\S)\\1{3,}", "");

Working Demo

Answer 2

How about:

Search: ^(.)\1{3,}
Replace: <NOTHING>

This will replace any character at the beginning of the string, present 4 or more times, by nothing.