How do I check that a Java String is not all whitespaces?

Question

I want to check that Java String or character array is not just made up of whitespaces, using Java?

This is a very similar question except it's Javascript:
How can I check if string contains characters & whitespace, not just whitespace?

EDIT : I removed the bit about alphanumeric characters, so it makes more sense.

Answer 1

Shortest solution I can think of:

if (string.trim().length() > 0) ...

This only checks for (non) white space. If you want to check for particular character classes, you need to use the mighty match() with a regexp such as:

if (string.matches(".*\\w.*")) ...

...which checks for at least one (ASCII) alphanumeric character.

Answer 2

I would use the Apache Commons Lang library. It has a class called StringUtils that is useful for all sorts of String operations. For checking if a String is not all whitespaces, you can use the following:

StringUtils.isBlank(<your string>)

Here is the reference: StringUtils.isBlank

Answer 3

比 Carl Smotricz 提到的略短：

!string.trim().isEmpty();

Answer 4

StringUtils.isBlank(CharSequence)

https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/javadocs/api-release/org/apache/commons/lang3/StringUtils.html#isBlank-java.lang.CharSequence-

Answer 5

If you are using Java 11 or more recent, the new isBlank string method will come in handy:

!s.isBlank();

If you are using Java 8, 9 or 10 , you could build a simple stream to check that a string is not whitespace only:

!s.chars().allMatch(Character::isWhitespace));

In addition to not requiring any third-party libraries such as Apache Commons Lang, these solutions have the advantage of handling any white space character, and not just plain ' ' spaces as would a trim -based solution suggested in many other answers. You can refer to the Javadocs for an exhaustive list of all supported white space types. Note that empty strings are also covered in both cases.

Answer 6

if(target.matches("\\S")) 
    // then string contains at least one non-whitespace character

Note use of back-slash cap-S, meaning "non-whitespace char"

I'd wager this is the simplest (and perhaps the fastest?) solution.

Answer 7

This answer focusses more on the sidenote " ie has at least one alphanumeric character ". Besides that, it doesn't add too much to the other (earlier) solution, except that it doesn't hurt you with NPE in case the String is null .

We want false if (1) s is null or (2) s is empty or (3) s only contains whitechars.

public static boolean containsNonWhitespaceChar(String s) {
  return !((s == null) || "".equals(s.trim()));
}

Answer 8

If you are only checking for whitespace and don't care about null then you can use org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils.isWhitespace(String str),

StringUtils.isWhitespace(String str);

(Checks if the String contains only whitespace.)

If you also want to check for null(including whitespace) then

StringUtils.isBlank(String str);

Answer 9

With Java-11+, you can make use of the String.isBlank API to check if the given string is not all made up of whitespace -

String str1 = "    ";
System.out.println(str1.isBlank()); // made up of all whitespaces, prints true

String str2 = "    a";
System.out.println(str2.isBlank()); // prints false

The javadoc for the same is :

/**
 * Returns {@code true} if the string is empty or contains only
 * {@link Character#isWhitespace(int) white space} codepoints,
 * otherwise {@code false}.
 *
 * @return {@code true} if the string is empty or contains only
 *         {@link Character#isWhitespace(int) white space} codepoints,
 *         otherwise {@code false}
 *
 * @since 11
 */
public boolean isBlank()

Answer 10

Just an performance comparement on openjdk 13, Windows 10. For each of theese texts:

"abcd"
"    "
" \r\n\t"
" ab "
" \n\n\r\t   \n\r\t\t\t   \r\n\r\n\r\t \t\t\t\r\n\n"
"lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipisici elit"
"1234657891234567891324569871234567891326987132654798"

executed one of following tests:

// trim + empty
input.trim().isEmpty()

// simple match
input.matches("\\S")

// match with precompiled pattern
final Pattern PATTERN = Pattern.compile("\\S");
PATTERN.matcher(input).matches()

// java 11's isBlank
input.isBlank()

each 10.000.000 times.

The results:

METHOD    min   max   note
trim:      18   313   much slower if text not trimmed
match:   1799  2010   
pattern:  571   662   
isBlank:   60   338   faster the earlier hits the first non-whitespace character

Quite surprisingly the trim+empty is the fastest. Even if it needs to construct the trimmed text. Still faster then simple for-loop looking for one single non-whitespaced character...

EDIT: The longer text, the more numbers differs. Trim of long text takes longer time than just simple loop. However, the regexs are still the slowest solution.

Answer 11

The trim method should work great for you.

http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17476_01/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#trim()

Returns a copy of the string, with leading and trailing whitespace omitted. If this String object represents an empty character sequence, or the first and last characters of character sequence represented by this String object both have codes greater than '\ ' (the space character), then a reference to this String object is returned.

Otherwise, if there is no character with a code greater than '\ ' in the string, then a new String object representing an empty string is created and returned.

Otherwise, let k be the index of the first character in the string whose code is greater than '\ ', and let m be the index of the last character in the string whose code is greater than '\ '. A new String object is created, representing the substring of this string that begins with the character at index k and ends with the character at index m-that is, the result of this.substring(k, m+1).

This method may be used to trim whitespace from the beginning and end of a string; in fact, it trims all ASCII control characters as well.

Returns: A copy of this string with leading and trailing white space removed, or this string if it has no leading or trailing white space.leading or trailing white space.

You could trim and then compare to an empty string or possibly check the length for 0.

Answer 12

Alternative:

boolean isWhiteSpaces( String s ) {
    return s != null && s.matches("\\s+");
 }

Answer 13

trim() and other mentioned regular expression do not work for all types of whitespaces

ie: Unicode Character 'LINE SEPARATOR' http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2028/index.htm

Java functions Character.isWhitespace() covers all situations.

That is why already mentioned solution StringUtils.isWhitespace( String ) /or StringUtils.isBlank(String) should be used.

Answer 14

StringUtils.isEmptyOrWhitespaceOnly(<your string>)

will check : - is it null - is it only space - is it empty string ""

https://www.programcreek.com/java-api-examples/?class=com.mysql.jdbc.StringUtils&method=isEmptyOrWhitespaceOnly

Answer 15

While personally I would be preferring !str.isBlank() , as others already suggested (or str -> !str.isBlank() as a Predicate), a more modern and efficient version of the str.trim() approach mentioned above, would be using str.strip() - considering nulls as "whitespace":

if (str != null && str.strip().length() > 0) {...}

For example as Predicate, for use with streams, eg in a unit test:

@Test
public void anyNonEmptyStrippedTest() {
    String[] strings = null;
    Predicate<String> isNonEmptyStripped = str -> str != null && str.strip().length() > 0;
    assertTrue(Optional.ofNullable(strings).map(arr -> Stream.of(arr).noneMatch(isNonEmptyStripped)).orElse(true));
    strings = new String[] { null, "", " ", "\\n", "\\t", "\\r" };
    assertTrue(Optional.ofNullable(strings).map(arr -> Stream.of(arr).anyMatch(isNonEmptyStripped)).orElse(true));
    strings = new String[] { null, "", " ", "\\n", "\\t", "\\r", "test" };
}

Answer 16

public static boolean isStringBlank(final CharSequence cs) {
        int strLen;
        if (cs == null || (strLen = cs.length()) == 0) {
            return true;
        }
        for (int i = 0; i < strLen; i++) {
            if (!Character.isWhitespace(cs.charAt(i))) {
                return false;
            }
        }
        return true;
    }