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javaspecial-charactershtmlspecialchars

How do I convert special characters using java?

I have strings like: 

Avery® Laser & Inkjet Self-Adhesive

I need to convert them to 

Avery Laser & Inkjet Self-Adhesive.

I.e. remove special characters and convert html special chars to regular ones.

Solution 
  • Avery® Laser & Inkjet Self-Adhesive

    First use StringEscapeUtils#unescapeHtml4() (or #unescapeXml(), depending on the original format) to unescape the & into a &. Then use String#replaceAll() with [^\x20-\x7e] to get rid of characters which aren't inside the printable ASCII range.

    Summarized:

    String clean = StringEscapeUtils.unescapeHtml4(dirty).replaceAll("[^\\x20-\\x7e]", "");

    ..which produces

    Avery Laser & Inkjet Self-Adhesive

    (without the trailing dot as in your example, but that wasn't present in the original ;) )

    That said, this however look like more a request to workaround than a request to solution. If you elaborate more about the functional requirement and/or where this string did originate, we may be able to provide the right solution. The ® namely look like to be caused by using the wrong encoding to read the string in and the & look like to be caused by using a textbased parser to read the string in instead of a fullfledged HTML parser.