In java how to get substring from a string till a character c?

You can just split the string..

public String[] split(String regex)

Note that java.lang.String.split uses delimiter's regular expression value. Basically like this...

String filename = "abc.def.ghi";     // full file name
String[] parts = filename.split("\\."); // String array, each element is text between dots

String beforeFirstDot = parts[0];    // Text before the first dot

Of course, this is split into multiple lines for clairity. It could be written as

String beforeFirstDot = filename.split("\\.")[0];

The accepted answer is correct but it doesn't tell you how to use it. This is how you use indexOf and substring functions together.

String filename = "abc.def.ghi";     // full file name
int iend = filename.indexOf("."); //this finds the first occurrence of "." 
//in string thus giving you the index of where it is in the string

// Now iend can be -1, if lets say the string had no "." at all in it i.e. no "." is found. 
//So check and account for it.

String subString;
if (iend != -1) 
{
    subString= filename.substring(0 , iend); //this will give abc
}