Strings and String Operations
Overview
Creating String Objects
Substring methods
The Concatenation Operator
Strings are Immutable
Other Methods of the String Class
Example using String Methods
Formatting Floating-point Numbers
Creating String Objects
Strings are Objects
String is a sequence of characters enclosed in
quotes. E.g. Hello
String processing is one of the most important and
most frequent applications of a computer
Java recognizes this fact and therefore provides
special support for strings to make their use
convenient
Every string is an instance of Javas built in String
class, thus, Strings are objects.
Declaration
Like any object, a string can be created using new
as in the following example:
Stringstr1=newString(Hellodear);
However, as an extra support, Java allows String
object to be created without the use of new, as in:
Stringstr2=Howareyou;
This is inconsistent with the way Java treats other
classes.
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Substrings
String objects are represented as a sequence of
characters indexed from 0.
Example: String greeting = Hello, World;
H e
o ,
W o r
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
A common operation on Strings is extracting a
substring from a a given string.
Java provides two methods for this operation:
Returns the substring from start to
substring(start);
the end of the string
substring(start, end); Returns a substring from start to end
but not including the character at
end.
Examples:
String sub = greeting.substring(0, 4); Hell
String w = greeting.substring(7, 12); World
String tail = greeting.substring(7); World!
Concatenation Operator
Another common operation on String is
concatenation.
As another special support for String, Java
overloaded the + operator to be used to concatenate
two String objects to get a bigger one.
String firstName = Amr;
String lastName = Al-Ibrahim;
String fullName = lastName++firstName;
Al-Ibrahim Amr
If one of the operands of the + operator is a string,
the other is automatically converted to string and
the two strings are then concatenated.
String course = ICS;
int code = 102;
String courseCode = course+code ICS102
We frequently use the concatenation operator in
println statements.
System.out.println(The area =+area);
You need to be careful with concatenation operator.
For example, what do you this the following print?
System.out.println(Sum =+5+6);
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Strings are Immutable
Another special feature of Strings is that they are
immutable. That is, once a string object is created,
its content cannot be changed. For example,
consider the following:
Stringstr1=HelloWorld;
str1=str1.substring(4);
Instead of changing the str1 object, another object
is created. The former is garbage collected, thus,
the reference to the former is lost.
The fact that Strings are immutable allows the Java
system to process Strings very efficiently.
For example, consider the following:
Stringstr1=Hello;
Stringstr2=Hello;
We would expect the following
But in fact, this is what happens
The Java system is smart enough to know that the
two strings are identical and allocates same
memory location for the two objects
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Methods of the String Class
In addition to the substring methods, several
predefined methods are provided in the built-in
String class. Some of these are:
int length()
returns the number of
characters in this String
String toUpperCase()
String toLowerCase()
returns a new String,
equivalent to the Upper/lower
case of this String
boolean equals(s)
boolean
equalsIgnoreCase(s)
returns true if s the same as this
String.
int compareTo(String s)
int
compareToIngoreCase(s)
returns +ve number, 0, or -ve
number if this String is greater
than, equal to or less than s.
char charAt(index)
returns the char in this String,
at the index position.
int indexOf(ch)
int lastIndexOf(ch)
Returns the index of the first /
last occurrence of ch in this
string, If not fount-1 is returned
String trim()
returns a String, obtained by
removing spaces from the start
and end of this string.
static String valueOf (any
primitive type)
Returns a String representation
of the argument
String concat(s)
equivalent to + symbol
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Example using methods of String
class
The following program generates a password for
a student using his initials and age.
publicclassMakePassword{
publicstaticvoidmain(String[]args){
StringfirstName="Amr";
StringmiddleName="Samir";
StringlastName="Ibrahim";
//extractinitials
Stringinitials=
firstName.substring(0,1)+
middleName.substring(0,1)+
lastName.substring(0,1);
//appendage
intage=20;
Stringpassword=
initials.toLowerCase()+age;
System.out.println("YourPassword
="+password);
}
}
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Formatting floating-point numbers
Some times we would like to print floating
point numbers only up to certain number of
decimal places.
For example we would want print the cost of
an item in the form: SR16.50
To achieve this, we use the
getNumberInstance method of the the
numberFormat class of the java.text
package, to create an object.
We then use the setMaximumFractionDigits
and setMinimumFractionDigits methods to
set the decimal places required.
Finally, we use the format method to format
our number.
The format method returns a string, so we
can print it.
The example in the next slide demonstrate
this process.
Formatting floating-point numbers
importjava.text.NumberFormat;
publicclassNumberFormatting{
publicstaticvoidmain(String[]args){
NumberFormatformatter=
NumberFormat.getNumberInstance();
formatter.setMaximumFractionDigits(2);
formatter.setMinimumFractionDigits(2);
doubleannualSalary=72500;
doublemonthlySalary=
annualSalary/12;
System.out.println("Unformatted
Salary:SR"+monthlySalary);
System.out.println("FormattedSalary:
SR"+formatter.format(monthlySalary));
}
}
Formatting floating-point numbers
We can also use the DecimalFormat class of the
same package to format floating-point numbers.
In this approach, we create an object of the
DecimalFormat class, specifying the format we
want as a parameter.
The difference between this approach and the
previous is that the comma is not used by default.
import java.text.DecimalFormat;
public class DecimalFormatting {
public static void main(String[] args) {
DecimalFormat formatter = new
DecimalFormat("0.00");
double celsius = 37;
double fahrenheit = 9.0/5.0*celsius+32;
System.out.println("Unformatted: "+celsius+"oC =
"+fahrenheit+"oF");
System.out.println("Formatted: "+celsius+"oC =
"+formatter.format(fahrenheit)+"oF");
}
}
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