Removing quotes from a string

Kotlin:
Removing quotes from a string

How to:

Here’s a simple way to remove both types of quotes from a string in Kotlin:

fun removeQuotes(input: String): String {
    return input.replace("\"", "").replace("'", "")
}

fun main() {
    val stringWithQuotes = "Kotlin \"rocks\" it's 'cool'"
    val stringWithoutQuotes = removeQuotes(stringWithQuotes)
    println(stringWithoutQuotes) // Output: Kotlin rocks its cool
}

And if you want to remove only one type of quote, just skip the other replace call.

fun removeDoubleQuotes(input: String): String {
    return input.replace("\"", "")
}

fun removeSingleQuotes(input: String): String {
    return input.replace("'", "")
}

fun main() {
    val stringWithQuotes = "Kotlin \"rocks\" it's 'cool'"
    println(removeDoubleQuotes(stringWithQuotes)) // Output: Kotlin rocks it's 'cool'
    println(removeSingleQuotes(stringWithQuotes)) // Output: Kotlin "rocks" its cool
}

Deep Dive

Historically, handling strings and escaping characters has been a core part of programming, as text is a fundamental way we interface with data. Quotes within strings sometimes need to be escaped. This is indicated by a preceding backslash (e.g., "She said, \"Hi!\""). When processing such strings, you might need to remove the escape characters, or the quotes themselves for cleaner or more usable text.

Alternatives to the replace method include regex-based removal or manually parsing the string, character by character. However, regex can be overkill for simple operations and manual parsing is less efficient than using built-in string functions. Kotlin’s replace function leverages the underlying Java’s String replace method, which is well-optimized for performance.

Implementation-wise, it’s worth mentioning that Kotlin is interoperable with Java, so, in effect, any operations you perform on strings are as performant as they would be in Java. It’s crucial when removing quotes to be aware of edge cases, like nested quotes, which could require a more sophisticated approach, possibly utilizing regular expressions or a parser library.

Kotlin:Removing quotes from a string

How to:

Deep Dive

See Also

Kotlin:
Removing quotes from a string