How to get a primitive string from a String object in Java?

Question

With an Integer object I can do this:

Integer one = new Integer(3);
int oneval = one.intValue();

Is there something similar for the String object?

What are you trying to do? Integer is the wrapper for an int, there is no primitive String. — jlordo
– jlordo, Commented Aug 2, 2013 at 21:44
docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/nutsandbolts/… — note there is no "string primitive," though it mentions String as similar. — Reinstate Monica -- notmaynard
– Reinstate Monica -- notmaynard, Commented Aug 2, 2013 at 21:55
All Strings are reference types. They are always objects. The Java Language goes to great lengths to provide syntactic sugar so that, at times, they can -seem- like primitives ... but they are always reference types. There is no such thing as a string primitive. — scottb
– scottb, Commented Aug 2, 2013 at 22:10

rgettman · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-02 21:44:06Z

12

There is no primitive string type in Java. The closest you can get is to call toCharArray to get the char[] array of characters in the string (and it's a copy of the characters).

Returns:

a newly allocated character array whose length is the length of this string and whose contents are initialized to contain the character sequence represented by this string.

answered Aug 2, 2013 at 21:44

rgettman

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T.J. Crowder Over a year ago

Possibly worth mentioning that you also don't need one (a primitive string type), since String is immutable. (Of course, so is Integer...)

Andy Thomas · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-02 21:50:02Z

3

Strings are not primitives in Java. Every String is an object.

What you can get from a String is a character array, or an encoded byte array. Although these aren't primitives, they're at least arrays of primitives.

  String s = "Twas brillig";
  char[] sChars = s.toCharArray();
  byte[] sBytes = s.getBytes();  // Default charset
  byte[] sBytes = s.getBytes( Charset.forName("UTF-8") );  // Specific charset

edited Aug 2, 2013 at 21:50

answered Aug 2, 2013 at 21:44

Andy Thomas

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