What is the difference between Character.isWhitespace(char) and Character.isSpaceChar(char)

Question

Both of them returns true if it is empty char / white space or else it returns false. My question is why java has both the methods as they are doing the same thing

Answer 1

Method isSpaceChar(char) is only for checking unicode space character (SPACE_SEPARATOR,LINE_SEPARATOR, PARAGRAPH_SEPARATOR) while method isWhiteSpace(char) is for space as well as other white space characters like tab,carriage return etc

char ch='\t';
System.out.println(Character.isWhitespace(ch));
System.out.println( Character.isSpaceChar(ch));

It outputs

true
false