How to convert special characters in a string to their "normal" counterparts

I would just do

final String find = "èíú";
final String repl = "eiu";
 
// (in loop)
s = s.replaceAll("" + find.charAt[i], "" + repl.charAt[i]);

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thanks  - hmm i forgot that multiple variations will exist for each "normal" letter

like
Ê                                         Ë È                                          É
should all be replaced with "E" (or converted into lowercase first, and then replaced by "e")

is there something to consider when comparing chars with special characters? (e.g. how do i encode them, if i can't type them on my keyboard).

thanks! :-)

:-)

hmm seem i was too fast closing this question

in your example, the lenght of find is 8, while repl is 4 - which means it doesnt work

Well - obviously you need to ensure they're the same length ;-)

nope what i meant is, if i use your example from above with 4 characters each, find.length() returns 8, while repl.length() returns 4.

find = "ÊËÈÉ"
repl = "EEEE"

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To be on the safe side:

for(int i = 0;i < Math.min(find.length(),repl.length());i++)

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i think, the first line does not initialize the find string as UTF-8 encoded.

if i iterate over the characters of find, i get this (see code).

obviously, this can't be used to compare to the repl string.

0: 
1: ä
2: 
3: ã
4: 
5: à
6: 
7: â

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Can you show me the code you're running? Also, using the following, please tell me the result of passing 'file.encoding' as a parameter to it

http://technojeeves.com/joomla/index.php/free/54-javasystemproperties

aah, file.encoding is "MacRoman"

final String prepare_find = "ÊËÈÉ";
final String prepare_repl = "eeee";
 
System.out.println("find: " + prepare_find.length());
System.out.println("repl: " + prepare_repl.length());
 
for (int i=0; i<prepare_find.length(); i++) {
   System.out.println(i + ": " + prepare_find.charAt(i));
}

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Ah OK. Refer to the MacRoman chart for your default chars. You might be better to install a full UTF-8 locale in the end

How do i do that on Mac OSX ?

Don't know i'm afraid. I've never been a Mac user, but i'm assuming its latest incarnations support a UTF-8 environment. Having said that, most of the exotic accented chars should be in MacRoman, since they appear in ISO8859-1:

http://technojeeves.com/joomla/index.php/free/48-iso8859-1