How do I convert special characters using java?
Avery® Laser & Inkjet Self-Adhesive
First use StringEscapeUtils#unescapeHtml4()
(or #unescapeXml()
, depending on the original format) to unescape the &
into a &
. Then use String#replaceAll()
with [^\x20-\x7e]
to get rid of characters which aren't inside the printable ASCII range.
Summarized:
String clean = StringEscapeUtils.unescapeHtml4(dirty).replaceAll("[^\\x20-\\x7e]", "");
..which produces
Avery Laser & Inkjet Self-Adhesive
(without the trailing dot as in your example, but that wasn't present in the original ;) )
That said, this however look like more a request to workaround than a request to solution. If you elaborate more about the functional requirement and/or where this string did originate, we may be able to provide the right solution. The ®
namely look like to be caused by using the wrong encoding to read the string in and the &
look like to be caused by using a textbased parser to read the string in instead of a fullfledged HTML parser.
You can use the StringEscapeUtils
class from Apache Commons Text project.