Exploring the Character Class in Java: A Comprehensive Guide

Java provides a wrapper class Character in java.lang package.

Character class wraps a value of the primitive type Java character in an object. An object of type Character contains a single field whose type is char.

what would be the benefit if wraps around the primitive data type to an object?

in development, we come across situations where we need to use objects instead of primitive data types. In order to achieve this, Java provides wrapper class Character for primitive data type char.
basically we would be able to access all the methods that is readily available on the Character class which is very useful. In addition, this class provides several methods for determining a character’s category (lowercase letter, digit, etc.) and for converting characters from uppercase to lowercase and vice versa.

Character information is based on the Unicode Standard, version 6.2.0.

Creating a Character object :

The Character class offers a number of useful class (i.e., static) methods for manipulating characters. You can create a Character object with the Character constructor ?

 Character ch = new Character('b');
 

If you pass a primitive char into a method that expects an object, the compiler automatically converts the char to a Character for you. This feature is called autoboxing or unboxing, The above statement creates a Character object which contain 'b' of type char. There is only one constructor in Character class which expect an argument of char data type.

 // Here following primitive char 'b'
// is boxed into the Character object ch
Character ch = 'b';

// Here primitive 'p' is boxed for method test,
// return is unboxed to char 'c'
char c = test('p');
 

The Character class as part of the java.lang package is one of the classes of the java api that is being widely used.

There is only one constructor available to Character class which we can use to instantiate a Character object:

A character preceded by a backslash (\) is an escape sequence and has a special meaning to the compiler.

Following table shows the Java escape sequences ?

Escape Sequences

Example of Escape Sequence

If you want to put quotes within quotes, you must use the escape sequence, \", on the interior quotes ?

public class EscapeSeq {

   public static void main(String args[]) {
      System.out.println("Example of \"Escape Sequence\" try it own.");
   }
}
 

Output

When an escape sequence is encountered in a print statement, the compiler interprets it accordingly.

 Example of "Escape Sequence" try it own.
Press any key to continue . . .
 

Equality of Character Class

Normally when we do equality test for Character primitive data type we do like this:

 	class Equality{

		public static void main(String args[])
		{
         Character char1= 'p';
   		 char char2 = 'p';
   		 if(char1==char2){
   			System.out.println("They are equal");
   		  }
   		else{
   			System.out.println("Values are not equal");
		}

	}
}
 

  They are equal
Press any key to continue . . .
 

	class Equality{

		public static void main(String args[])
		{
            Character char1 = 'p';
		   	Character char2 = new Character('c');
		   if(char1.equals(char2)){
		    	System.out.println("They are equal");
				}
			else{
			System.out.println("They are not equal");
		}

	}
}
 

They are not equal
Press any key to continue . . .
 

Character Class Method Usage Examples

The java.lang.Character class includes many useful static methods with which text (or characters) can be manipulated. The other text manipulating classes are String, StringBuffer, StringTokenizer and StringBuilder.

Character Methods for beginners:

All Character Methods :