String strip() – Remove Leading and Trailing White Spaces

Learn to use String class’s strip(), stripLeading() and stripTrailing() methods to remove unwanted white spaces from a given string in Java 11.

1. Using String strip() APIs – Java 11

Since Java 11, String class includes 3 more methods that help in removing extra white spaces. These methods use Character.isWhitespace(char) method to determine a white space character.

• String strip() – returns a string whose value is given string, with all leading and trailing white space removed. Please note that String.trim() method also produces the same result.
• String stripLeading() – returns a string whose value is given string, with all leading white space removed.
• String stripTrailing() – returns a string whose value is given string, with all trailing white space removed.

String str = "  Hello World !!   ";

System.out.println( str.strip() );      //"Hello World !!"

System.out.println( str.stripLeading() ); //"Hello World !!   "

System.out.println( str.stripTrailing() );  //"  Hello World !!"

See Also: Removing Leading Spaces and Removing Trailing Spaces from a String

2. Using Regex

If you are not using Java 11 then you can use regular expressions to trim the white spaces (including tabs) around a string.

String str = "  Hello World !!   ";

System.out.println( str.replaceAll("^[ \t]+|[ \t]+$", "") );  //"Hello World !!"

System.out.println( str.replaceAll("^[ \t]+", "") );      //"Hello World !!   "

System.out.println( str.replaceAll("[ \t]+$", "") );      //"  Hello World !!"

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