Is there a way to get rid of accents and convert a whole string to regular letters?

java string diacritics
Martin picture Martin · Jul 23, 2010 · Viewed 157.2k times · Source

Is there a better way for getting rid of accents and making those letters regular apart from using String.replaceAll() method and replacing letters one by one? Example:

Input: orčpžsíáýd

Output: orcpzsiayd

It doesn't need to include all letters with accents like the Russian alphabet or the Chinese one.

Answer

Erick Robertson picture Erick Robertson · Jul 23, 2010

Use java.text.Normalizer to handle this for you.

string = Normalizer.normalize(string, Normalizer.Form.NFD);
// or Normalizer.Form.NFKD for a more "compatable" deconstruction

This will separate all of the accent marks from the characters. Then, you just need to compare each character against being a letter and throw out the ones that aren't.

string = string.replaceAll("[^\\p{ASCII}]", "");

If your text is in unicode, you should use this instead:

string = string.replaceAll("\\p{M}", "");

For unicode, \\P{M} matches the base glyph and \\p{M} (lowercase) matches each accent.

Thanks to GarretWilson for the pointer and regular-expressions.info for the great unicode guide.

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