Truncating Strings by Bytes

Question

I create the following for truncating a string in java to a new string with a given number of bytes.

        String truncatedValue = "";
        String currentValue = string;
        int pivotIndex = (int) Math.round(((double) string.length())/2);
        while(!truncatedValue.equals(currentValue)){
            currentValue = string.substring(0,pivotIndex);
            byte[] bytes = null;
            bytes = currentValue.getBytes(encoding);
            if(bytes==null){
                return string;
            }
            int byteLength = bytes.length;
            int newIndex =  (int) Math.round(((double) pivotIndex)/2);
            if(byteLength > maxBytesLength){
                pivotIndex = newIndex;
            } else if(byteLength < maxBytesLength){
                pivotIndex = pivotIndex + 1;
            } else {
                truncatedValue = currentValue;
            }
        }
        return truncatedValue;

This is the first thing that came to my mind, and I know I could improve on it. I saw another post that was asking a similar question there, but they were truncating Strings using the bytes instead of String.substring. I think I would rather use String.substring in my case.

EDIT: I just removed the UTF8 reference because I would rather be able to do this for different storage types as well.

Answer 1

Why not convert to bytes and walk forward--obeying UTF8 character boundaries as you do it--until you've got the max number, then convert those bytes back into a string?

Or you could just cut the original string if you keep track of where the cut should occur:

// Assuming that Java will always produce valid UTF8 from a string, so no error checking!
// (Is this always true, I wonder?)
public class UTF8Cutter {
  public static String cut(String s, int n) {
    byte[] utf8 = s.getBytes();
    if (utf8.length < n) n = utf8.length;
    int n16 = 0;
    int advance = 1;
    int i = 0;
    while (i < n) {
      advance = 1;
      if ((utf8[i] & 0x80) == 0) i += 1;
      else if ((utf8[i] & 0xE0) == 0xC0) i += 2;
      else if ((utf8[i] & 0xF0) == 0xE0) i += 3;
      else { i += 4; advance = 2; }
      if (i <= n) n16 += advance;
    }
    return s.substring(0,n16);
  }
}

^{Note: edited to fix bugs on 2014-08-25}

Answer 2

The more sane solution is using decoder:

final Charset CHARSET = Charset.forName("UTF-8"); // or any other charset
final byte[] bytes = inputString.getBytes(CHARSET);
final CharsetDecoder decoder = CHARSET.newDecoder();
decoder.onMalformedInput(CodingErrorAction.IGNORE);
decoder.reset();
final CharBuffer decoded = decoder.decode(ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes, 0, limit));
final String outputString = decoded.toString();

Answer 3

I think Rex Kerr's solution has 2 bugs.

• First, it will truncate to limit+1 if a non-ASCII character is just before the limit. Truncating "123456789á1" will result in "123456789á" which is represented in 11 characters in UTF-8.
• Second, I think he misinterpreted the UTF standard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8#Description shows that a 110xxxxx at the beginning of a UTF sequence tells us that the representation is 2 characters long (as opposed to 3). That's the reason his implementation usually doesn't use up all available space (as Nissim Avitan noted).

Please find my corrected version below:

public String cut(String s, int charLimit) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
    byte[] utf8 = s.getBytes("UTF-8");
    if (utf8.length <= charLimit) {
        return s;
    }
    int n16 = 0;
    boolean extraLong = false;
    int i = 0;
    while (i < charLimit) {
        // Unicode characters above U+FFFF need 2 words in utf16
        extraLong = ((utf8[i] & 0xF0) == 0xF0);
        if ((utf8[i] & 0x80) == 0) {
            i += 1;
        } else {
            int b = utf8[i];
            while ((b & 0x80) > 0) {
                ++i;
                b = b << 1;
            }
        }
        if (i <= charLimit) {
            n16 += (extraLong) ? 2 : 1;
        }
    }
    return s.substring(0, n16);
}

I still thought this was far from effective. So if you don't really need the String representation of the result and the byte array will do, you can use this:

private byte[] cutToBytes(String s, int charLimit) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
    byte[] utf8 = s.getBytes("UTF-8");
    if (utf8.length <= charLimit) {
        return utf8;
    }
    if ((utf8[charLimit] & 0x80) == 0) {
        // the limit doesn't cut an UTF-8 sequence
        return Arrays.copyOf(utf8, charLimit);
    }
    int i = 0;
    while ((utf8[charLimit-i-1] & 0x80) > 0 && (utf8[charLimit-i-1] & 0x40) == 0) {
        ++i;
    }
    if ((utf8[charLimit-i-1] & 0x80) > 0) {
        // we have to skip the starter UTF-8 byte
        return Arrays.copyOf(utf8, charLimit-i-1);
    } else {
        // we passed all UTF-8 bytes
        return Arrays.copyOf(utf8, charLimit-i);
    }
}

Funny thing is that with a realistic 20-500 byte limit they perform pretty much the same IF you create a string from the byte array again.

Please note that both methods assume a valid utf-8 input which is a valid assumption after using Java's getBytes() function.

Answer 4

String s = "FOOBAR";

int limit = 3;
s = new String(s.getBytes(), 0, limit);

Result value of s:

FOO

Answer 5

Use the UTF-8 CharsetEncoder, and encode until the output ByteBuffer contains as many bytes as you are willing to take, by looking for CoderResult.OVERFLOW.

Answer 6

As noted, Peter Lawrey solution has major performance disadvantage (~3,500msc for 10,000 times), Rex Kerr was much better (~500msc for 10,000 times) but the result not was accurate - it cut much more than it needed (instead of remaining 4000 bytes it remainds 3500 for some example). attached here my solution (~250msc for 10,000 times) assuming that UTF-8 max length char in bytes is 4 (thanks WikiPedia):

public static String cutWord (String word, int dbLimit) throws UnsupportedEncodingException{
    double MAX_UTF8_CHAR_LENGTH = 4.0;
    if(word.length()>dbLimit){
        word = word.substring(0, dbLimit);
    }
    if(word.length() > dbLimit/MAX_UTF8_CHAR_LENGTH){
        int residual=word.getBytes("UTF-8").length-dbLimit;
        if(residual>0){
            int tempResidual = residual,start, end = word.length();
            while(tempResidual > 0){
                start = end-((int) Math.ceil((double)tempResidual/MAX_UTF8_CHAR_LENGTH));
                tempResidual = tempResidual - word.substring(start,end).getBytes("UTF-8").length;
                end=start;
            }
            word = word.substring(0, end);
        }
    }
    return word;
}

Answer 7

you could convert the string to bytes and convert just those bytes back to a string.

public static String substring(String text, int maxBytes) {
   StringBuilder ret = new StringBuilder();
   for(int i = 0;i < text.length(); i++) {
       // works out how many bytes a character takes, 
       // and removes these from the total allowed.
       if((maxBytes -= text.substring(i, i+1).getBytes().length) < 0) break;
       ret.append(text.charAt(i));
   }
   return ret.toString();
}

Answer 8

This is my :

private static final int FIELD_MAX = 2000;
private static final Charset CHARSET =  Charset.forName("UTF-8"); 

public String trancStatus(String status) {

    if (status != null && (status.getBytes(CHARSET).length > FIELD_MAX)) {
        int maxLength = FIELD_MAX;

        int left = 0, right = status.length();
        int index = 0, bytes = 0, sizeNextChar = 0;

        while (bytes != maxLength && (bytes > maxLength || (bytes + sizeNextChar < maxLength))) {

            index = left + (right - left) / 2;

            bytes = status.substring(0, index).getBytes(CHARSET).length;
            sizeNextChar = String.valueOf(status.charAt(index + 1)).getBytes(CHARSET).length;

            if (bytes < maxLength) {
                left = index - 1;
            } else {
                right = index + 1;
            }
        }

        return status.substring(0, index);

    } else {
        return status;
    }
}

Answer 9

By using below Regular Expression also you can remove leading and trailing white space of double byte character.

stringtoConvert = stringtoConvert.replaceAll("^[\\s　]*", "").replaceAll("[\\s　]*$", "");

Answer 10

This one could not be the more efficient solution but works

public static String substring(String s, int byteLimit) {
    if (s.getBytes().length <= byteLimit) {
        return s;
    }

    int n = Math.min(byteLimit-1, s.length()-1);
    do {
        s = s.substring(0, n--);
    } while (s.getBytes().length > byteLimit);

    return s;
}

Answer 11

I've improved upon Peter Lawrey's solution to accurately handle surrogate pairs. In addition, I optimized based on the fact that the maximum number of bytes per char in UTF-8 encoding is 3.

public static String substring(String text, int maxBytes) {
    for (int i = 0, len = text.length(); (len - i) * 3 > maxBytes;) {
        int j = text.offsetByCodePoints(i, 1);
        if ((maxBytes -= text.substring(i, j).getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8).length) < 0)  
            return text.substring(0, i);
        i = j;
    }
    return text;
}

Answer 12

Binary search approach in scala:

private def bytes(s: String) = s.getBytes("UTF-8")

def truncateToByteLength(string: String, length: Int): String =
  if (length <= 0 || string.isEmpty) ""
  else {
    @tailrec
    def loop(badLen: Int, goodLen: Int, good: String): String = {
      assert(badLen > goodLen, s"""badLen is $badLen but goodLen is $goodLen ("$good")""")
      if (badLen == goodLen + 1) good
      else {
        val mid = goodLen + (badLen - goodLen) / 2
        val midStr = string.take(mid)
        if (bytes(midStr).length > length)
          loop(mid, goodLen, good)
        else
          loop(badLen, mid, midStr)
      }
    }

    loop(string.length * 2, 0, "")
  }