[Solved] How can I read this string in Java? [closed]

Question

Here are several ways to get the first character:

String str = "x , y - zzzzzz";
System.out.println(str.charAt(0));
System.out.println(str.substring(0, 1));
System.out.println(str.replaceAll("^(.).*", "$1"));

See IDEONE demo

Choose the one you like more 🙂

UPDATE:

To find the first word, you may use the following regex pattern:

String pattern = "[\\s\\p{P}]+";

\s stands for whitespace, and \p{P} stands for punctuation.

You can use split with this as in

String str = "xxxxxxx , yyyyyyy - zzzzzz";
System.out.println(str.split(pattern)[0]);
str = "xxxxxxx - zzzzzz";
System.out.println(str.split(pattern)[0]);
str = "xxxxxxx, zzzzzz";
System.out.println(str.split(pattern)[0]);
str = "xxxxxxx-zzzzzz";
System.out.println(str.split(pattern)[0]);

All will output xxxxxxx. However, if you need to restrict the punctuation to some smaller subset, either exclude them in the &&[^-] negated subtraction:

[\\s\\p{P}&&[^-]]+

Or just define your own range:

[\\s.,;:]+

Just another demo

Accepted Answer