How to Remove Last Character from String in Java

In Java, there are mainly three classes related to the String. The classes are String, StringBuilder, and StringBuffer class that provides methods related to string manipulation. Removing the first and last character from the String is also an operation that we can perform on the string.

In this section, we will learn how to remove the last character from String in Java. At the last of this section, we have also explained how to delete the first and last character of each word in a string.

There are four ways to remove the last character from a string:

Using StringBuffer.deleteCahrAt() Class
Using String.substring() Method
Using StringUtils.chop() Method
Using Regular Expression

Using StringBuffer Class

The StringBuffer class provides a method deleteCharAt(). The method deletes a character from the specified position. We use the method to remove a character from a string in Java. It accepts a parameter index of type int. The index is the position of a character we want to delete. It returns this object.

Syntax:

It throws StringIndexOutOfBoundsException if we specify a negative index or the index is greater than or equal to the length of the string.

Let's implement the method in an example.

RemoveLastCharcter1.java

public class RemoveLastCharcter1
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
String string = "Javatpoint is the best educational websites";
//creating a constructor of StringBuffer class
StringBuffer sb= new StringBuffer(string);
//invoking the method
sb.deleteCharAt(sb.length()-1);
//prints the string after deleting the character 
System.out.println(sb);
}
}

Output:

Javatpoint is the best educational website

In the above output, we see that the last character s has been deleted.

Using String.substring() Method

The substring() is the method of the String class. It parses two parameters beginIndex and endIndex of type int. It returns a new string (sub-string). It is not thread-safe because does not throws an exception if the string is null or empty.

Syntax:

If the beginIndex is negative or beginIndex > endIndex or the endIndex > length of the string it throws IndexOutOfBoundsException.

RemoveLastCharacter2.java

public class RemoveLastCharacter2
{
public static void main(String[] args) 
{
//object of the class
RemoveLastCharacter2 rlc = new RemoveLastCharacter2();
String string="Welcome to Javatpoint";
//method calling
string=rlc.removeLastChar(string);		
//prints the string 
System.out.println(string);
}
//method to remove last character
private String removeLastChar(String s) 
{
//returns the string after removing the last character
return s.substring(0, s.length() - 1);
} 
}

Output:

Welcome to Javatpoin

Using StringUtils.chop() Method

The StringUtils class provides a chop() method to remove the last character from a string. The method parses a parameter of type String. It also accepts null, as a parameter. It returns the string after removing the last character. It also returns a null string when we input a null string.

Syntax:

For using the chop() method of the StringUtils class, we need to add the following dependency in the pom.xml file. When we add the Apache commons lang3 jar in the pom file it downloads the jar file and add the jar file to the path. We must import the package
org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils

<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
<version>3.9</version>
</dependency>

After adding the dependency, we can call the chop() method of StringUtils class to remove the last character from the string.

RemoveLastCharacter3.java

import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;
public class RemoveLastCharacter3
{
public static void main(String[] args) 
{
String string="Google";
//invoking method
string=StringUtils.chop(string);
//prints the string after chopping the last character
System.out.println(string);
}
}

Output:

Googl

Using Regular Expression

We can also use the regular expression to remove or delete the last character from the string. The String class provides the replaceAll() method that parses two parameters regex and replacement of type String. The method replaces the string with the specified match.

regex: It is the expression with which the string is to match.
replacement: It is the replacement string or substitute string for each match.

It returns the resulting substring.

Syntax:

It throws PatternSyntaxException if the regular expression syntax is invalid.

RemoveLastCharacter4.java

public class RemoveLastCharacter4  
{
public static void main(String[] args) 
{
//creating an object of the class
RemoveLastCharacter4 rlc=new RemoveLastCharacter4();
String string="Honesty is the best policy";
//method calling
string=rlc.removeLastCharacter(string);
//prints the string
System.out.println(string);
}
public String removeLastCharacter(String str) 
{
//the replaceAll() method removes the string and returns the string
return (str == null) ? null : str.replaceAll(".$", "");
}
}

Output:

Honesty is the best polic

Removing the First and Last Character of Each Word in a String

We can also remove or delete the first and last character of each word in a string. To remove the first and last character, we use the following steps:

Split (break) the String based on the space.
For each word, run a loop form the first to last letter.
Identify the first and last character of each word.
Now, delete the first and last character of each word.

RemoveFirstAndLastCharacter.java

import java.util.*; 
public class RemoveFirstAndLastCharacter
{ 
static String removeFirstAndLast(String str) 
{ 
//breaks the string based on space and makes the array of string
String[] arrOfStr = str.split(" "); 
//stores the resultant string
String result_string = ""; 
//iterate over the words
for (String s : arrOfStr) 
{ 
//removes first and last character 
result_string += s.substring(1, s.length() - 1) + " "; 
} 
return result_string; 
} 
//main method
public static void main(String args[]) 
{ 
String string = "Javatpoint is the best educational websites";
//prints the string before removing the first and last character
System.out.println(string); 
//calling method and prints the string after removing the first and last character
System.out.println(removeFirstAndLast(string)); 
} 
}

Output:

Javatpoint is the best educational website
avatpoin  h es ducationa ebsit

In the above output, we see that the first and last character has been removed from each word of the string. The word "is" has been removed completely because it has only two characters.

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