How to Iterate Over Characters of String in Java

1. Use String.chars() in Java 8 to Iterate Over All Characters in a String
2. Use String.codePoints() Java 8 to Loop Over All Characters in a String in Java
3. Use String.toCharArray() to Loop Over All Characters in a String in Java
4. Use StringCharacterIterator to Iterate Over All Characters in a String in Java
5. Use String.split() to Loop Over All Characters in a String in Java

This article will introduce various methods to iterate over every character in a string in Java.

Use String.chars() in Java 8 to Iterate Over All Characters in a String

Java 8 provides us with a new method String.chars() which returns an IntStream. The returned IntStream contains an integer representation of the characters in the string. Here we get stream1 from myString.chars().

We map the returned IntStream into an object. The stream1.mapToObj() converts the integer values into their respective character equivalent. However, to display and read the characters, we need to convert them into a user-friendly character form.

import java.util.stream.IntStream;

public class ForEachChar {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String myString = "Hello There!";
    String myString2 = "My Friends";
    String myString3 = "Happy Coding";

    IntStream stream1 = myString.chars();
    IntStream stream2 = myString2.chars();
    IntStream stream3 = myString3.chars();

    stream1.mapToObj(Character::toChars).forEach(System.out::print);
    System.out.println("");

    stream2.mapToObj(i -> new Character((char) i)).forEach(System.out::print);
    System.out.println("");

    stream3.forEach(i -> System.out.print(Character.toChars(i)));
  }
}

Output:

Hello There!
My Friends
Happy Coding

Use String.codePoints() Java 8 to Loop Over All Characters in a String in Java

Java 8 String.codePoints() returns an IntStream of Unicode code points from this sequence. It returns the ASCII values of the character passed.

We can map the returned IntStream to an object using stream.mapToObj so that it will be automatically converted into a Stream<Character>. We use the method reference and print each character in the specified string.

import java.util.stream.IntStream;

public class ForEachChar {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String myString = "Happy Coding";
    IntStream stream = myString.codePoints();
    stream.mapToObj(Character::toChars).forEach(System.out::print);
  }
}

Output:

Happy Coding 

Use String.toCharArray() to Loop Over All Characters in a String in Java

The String.toCharArray() method converts the given string into a sequence of characters. It returns a Character array whose length is similar to the length of the string.

To iterate over every character in a string, we can use toCharArray() and display each character.

public class ForEachChar {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String myString = "Hello Friends";
    char[] chars = myString.toCharArray();
    int len = chars.length;
    System.out.println("length of the char array: " + len);
    for (char ch : chars) {
      System.out.println(ch);
    }
  }
}

Output:

length of the char array: 13
H
e
l
l
o
 
F
r
i
e
n
d
s

Use StringCharacterIterator to Iterate Over All Characters in a String in Java

The StringCharacterIterator class implements a bidirectional iteration of the string. It takes a string as the parameter, which constructs an iterator with an initial index of 0.

In the while loop, we call current() on the iterator it, which returns the character at the current position or returns DONE if the current position is the end of the text.

The next() method on it returns the character at the new position or DONE if the new position is the end.

import java.text.CharacterIterator;
import java.text.StringCharacterIterator;
public class ForEachChar {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String myString = "Hello Friends";
    CharacterIterator it = new StringCharacterIterator(myString);

    while (it.current() != CharacterIterator.DONE) {
      System.out.print(it.current());
      it.next();
    }
  }
}

Output:

Hello Friends

Use String.split() to Loop Over All Characters in a String in Java

The String.split() method splits the string against the given regular expression and returns a new array.

In the code below, we use myString.split("") to split the string between each character. We can iterate every character in the str_arr and display it.

public class ForEachChar {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    String myString = "Hello Friends";
    String[] str_arr = myString.split("");

    for (String ch : str_arr) {
      System.out.print(ch);
    }
  }
}

Output:

Hello Friends