How to remove all leading slashes in a string?

Question

I have a string in Java, it starts with slashes, but the number of slashes is unknown. How can I remove all theses slashes at start?

For example:

String a="//abc";

Should output abc .

String b="////abc";

Should also output abc .

Answer 1

You can use a simple pattern for that:

private static final Pattern HEADING_SLASHES = Pattern.compile("^/+");

// ...

public static String removeHeadingSlashes(final String input)
{
    // .replaceFirst() or .replaceAll() will have the same effect, so...
    return HEADING_SLASHES.matcher(input).replaceFirst("");
}

Answer 2

The trick is to remove the leading slashes, not all slashes.

public class StringTest {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String url = "////abc//def";
        System.out.println(url.replaceFirst("/+", ""));
    }

}

Answer 3

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String slashString = "//ab/c";

    System.out.println(slashString.replaceAll("^/+", ""));
}

output is:

ab/c