How to convert a string with Unicode encoding to a string of letters

The Apache Commons Lang StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava() can decode it properly.

import org.apache.commons.lang.StringEscapeUtils;

@Test
public void testUnescapeJava() {
    String sJava="\\u0048\\u0065\\u006C\\u006C\\u006F";
    System.out.println("StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava(sJava):\n" + StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava(sJava));
}


 output:
 StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava(sJava):
 Hello

You can use StringEscapeUtils from Apache Commons Lang, i.e.:

String Title = StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava("\\u0048\\u0065\\u006C\\u006C\\u006F");

This simple method will work for most cases, but would trip up over something like "u005Cu005C" which should decode to the string "\u0048" but would actually decode "H" as the first pass produces "\u0048" as the working string which then gets processed again by the while loop.

static final String decode(final String in)
{
    String working = in;
    int index;
    index = working.indexOf("\\u");
    while(index > -1)
    {
        int length = working.length();
        if(index > (length-6))break;
        int numStart = index + 2;
        int numFinish = numStart + 4;
        String substring = working.substring(numStart, numFinish);
        int number = Integer.parseInt(substring,16);
        String stringStart = working.substring(0, index);
        String stringEnd   = working.substring(numFinish);
        working = stringStart + ((char)number) + stringEnd;
        index = working.indexOf("\\u");
    }
    return working;
}

With Kotlin you can write your own extension function for String

fun String.unescapeUnicode() = replace("\\\\u([0-9A-Fa-f]{4})".toRegex()) {
    String(Character.toChars(it.groupValues[1].toInt(radix = 16)))
}

and then

fun main() {
    val originalString = "\\u0048\\u0065\\u006C\\u006C\\u006F World"
    println(originalString.unescapeUnicode())
}

Shorter version:

public static String unescapeJava(String escaped) {
    if(escaped.indexOf("\\u")==-1)
        return escaped;

    String processed="";

    int position=escaped.indexOf("\\u");
    while(position!=-1) {
        if(position!=0)
            processed+=escaped.substring(0,position);
        String token=escaped.substring(position+2,position+6);
        escaped=escaped.substring(position+6);
        processed+=(char)Integer.parseInt(token,16);
        position=escaped.indexOf("\\u");
    }
    processed+=escaped;

    return processed;
}

StringEscapeUtils from org.apache.commons.lang3 library is deprecated as of 3.6.

So you can use their new commons-text library instead:

compile 'org.apache.commons:commons-text:1.9'

OR

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
   <artifactId>commons-text</artifactId>
   <version>1.9</version>
</dependency>

Example code:

org.apache.commons.text.StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava(escapedString);

For Java 9+, you can use the new replaceAll method of Matcher class.

private static final Pattern UNICODE_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("\\\\u([0-9A-Fa-f]{4})");

public static String unescapeUnicode(String unescaped) {
    return UNICODE_PATTERN.matcher(unescaped).replaceAll(r -> String.valueOf((char) Integer.parseInt(r.group(1), 16)));
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String originalMessage = "\\u0048\\u0065\\u006C\\u006C\\u006F World";
    String unescapedMessage = unescapeUnicode(originalMessage);
    System.out.println(unescapedMessage);
}

I believe the main advantage of this approach over unescapeJava by StringEscapeUtils (besides not using an extra library) is that you can convert only the unicode characters (if you wish), since the latter converts all escaped Java characters (like \n or \t). If you prefer to convert all escaped characters the library is really the best option.

It's not totally clear from your question, but I'm assuming you saying that you have a file where each line of that file is a filename. And each filename is something like this:

\u0048\u0065\u006C\u006C\u006F

In other words, the characters in the file of filenames are \, u, 0, 0, 4, 8 and so on.

If so, what you're seeing is expected. Java only translates \uXXXX sequences in string literals in source code (and when reading in stored Properties objects). When you read the contents you file you will have a string consisting of the characters \, u, 0, 0, 4, 8 and so on and not the string Hello.

So you will need to parse that string to extract the 0048, 0065, etc. pieces and then convert them to chars and make a string from those chars and then pass that string to the routine that opens the file.

Just wanted to contribute my version, using regex:

private static final String UNICODE_REGEX = "\\\\u([0-9a-f]{4})";
private static final Pattern UNICODE_PATTERN = Pattern.compile(UNICODE_REGEX);
...
String message = "\u0048\u0065\u006C\u006C\u006F World";
Matcher matcher = UNICODE_PATTERN.matcher(message);
StringBuffer decodedMessage = new StringBuffer();
while (matcher.find()) {
  matcher.appendReplacement(
      decodedMessage, String.valueOf((char) Integer.parseInt(matcher.group(1), 16)));
}
matcher.appendTail(decodedMessage);
System.out.println(decodedMessage.toString());

Updates regarding answers suggesting using The Apache Commons Lang's: StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava() - it was deprecated,

Deprecated. as of 3.6, use commons-text StringEscapeUtils instead

The replacement is Apache Commons Text's StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava()

UnicodeUnescaper from Apache Commons Text does exactly what you want, and ignores any other escape sequences.

String input = "\\u0048\\u0065\\u006C\\u006C\\u006F World";
String output = new UnicodeUnescaper().translate(input);
assert("Hello World".equals(output));
assert("\u0048\u0065\u006C\u006C\u006F World".equals(output));

Where input would be the string you are reading from a file.

one easy way i know using JsonObject:

try {
    JSONObject json = new JSONObject();
    json.put("string", myString);
    String converted = json.getString("string");

} catch (JSONException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

I wrote a performanced and error-proof solution:

public static final String decode(final String in) {
    int p1 = in.indexOf("\\u");
    if (p1 < 0)
        return in;
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    while (true) {
        int p2 = p1 + 6;
        if (p2 > in.length()) {
            sb.append(in.subSequence(p1, in.length()));
            break;
        }
        try {
            int c = Integer.parseInt(in.substring(p1 + 2, p1 + 6), 16);
            sb.append((char) c);
            p1 += 6;
        } catch (Exception e) {
            sb.append(in.subSequence(p1, p1 + 2));
            p1 += 2;
        }
        int p0 = in.indexOf("\\u", p1);
        if (p0 < 0) {
            sb.append(in.subSequence(p1, in.length()));
            break;
        } else {
            sb.append(in.subSequence(p1, p0));
            p1 = p0;
        }
    }
    return sb.toString();
}

Fast

 fun unicodeDecode(unicode: String): String {
        val stringBuffer = StringBuilder()
        var i = 0
        while (i < unicode.length) {
            if (i + 1 < unicode.length)
                if (unicode[i].toString() + unicode[i + 1].toString() == "\\u") {
                    val symbol = unicode.substring(i + 2, i + 6)
                    val c = Integer.parseInt(symbol, 16)
                    stringBuffer.append(c.toChar())
                    i += 5
                } else stringBuffer.append(unicode[i])
            i++
        }
        return stringBuffer.toString()
    }

try

private static final Charset UTF_8 = Charset.forName("UTF-8");
private String forceUtf8Coding(String input) {return new String(input.getBytes(UTF_8), UTF_8))}

Actually, I wrote an Open Source library that contains some utilities. One of them is converting a Unicode sequence to String and vise-versa. I found it very useful. Here is the quote from the article about this library about Unicode converter:

Class StringUnicodeEncoderDecoder has methods that can convert a String (in any language) into a sequence of Unicode characters and vise-versa. For example a String "Hello World" will be converted into

"\u0048\u0065\u006c\u006c\u006f\u0020 \u0057\u006f\u0072\u006c\u0064"

and may be restored back.

Here is the link to entire article that explains what Utilities the library has and how to get the library to use it. It is available as Maven artifact or as source from Github. It is very easy to use. Open Source Java library with stack trace filtering, Silent String parsing Unicode converter and Version comparison

Here is my solution...

                String decodedName = JwtJson.substring(startOfName, endOfName);

                StringBuilder builtName = new StringBuilder();

                int i = 0;

                while ( i < decodedName.length() )
                {
                    if ( decodedName.substring(i).startsWith("\\u"))
                    {
                        i=i+2;
                        builtName.append(Character.toChars(Integer.parseInt(decodedName.substring(i,i+4), 16)));
                        i=i+4;
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        builtName.append(decodedName.charAt(i));
                        i = i+1;
                    }
                };

I found that many of the answers did not address the issue of "Supplementary Characters". Here is the correct way to support it. No third-party libraries, pure Java implementation.

http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/java/supplementary-142654.html

public static String fromUnicode(String unicode) {
    String str = unicode.replace("\\", "");
    String[] arr = str.split("u");
    StringBuffer text = new StringBuffer();
    for (int i = 1; i < arr.length; i++) {
        int hexVal = Integer.parseInt(arr[i], 16);
        text.append(Character.toChars(hexVal));
    }
    return text.toString();
}

public static String toUnicode(String text) {
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
    for (int i = 0; i < text.length(); i++) {
        int codePoint = text.codePointAt(i);
        // Skip over the second char in a surrogate pair
        if (codePoint > 0xffff) {
            i++;
        }
        String hex = Integer.toHexString(codePoint);
        sb.append("\\u");
        for (int j = 0; j < 4 - hex.length(); j++) {
            sb.append("0");
        }
        sb.append(hex);
    }
    return sb.toString();
}

@Test
public void toUnicode() {
    System.out.println(toUnicode("😊"));
    System.out.println(toUnicode("🥰"));
    System.out.println(toUnicode("Hello World"));
}
// output:
// \u1f60a
// \u1f970
// \u0048\u0065\u006c\u006c\u006f\u0020\u0057\u006f\u0072\u006c\u0064

@Test
public void fromUnicode() {
    System.out.println(fromUnicode("\\u1f60a"));
    System.out.println(fromUnicode("\\u1f970"));
    System.out.println(fromUnicode("\\u0048\\u0065\\u006c\\u006c\\u006f\\u0020\\u0057\\u006f\\u0072\\u006c\\u0064"));
}
// output:
// 😊
// 🥰
// Hello World

@NominSim There may be other character, so I should detect it by length.

private String forceUtf8Coding(String str) {
    str = str.replace("\\","");
    String[] arr = str.split("u");
    StringBuilder text = new StringBuilder();
    for(int i = 1; i < arr.length; i++){
        String a = arr[i];
        String b = "";
        if (arr[i].length() > 4){
            a = arr[i].substring(0, 4);
            b = arr[i].substring(4);
        }
        int hexVal = Integer.parseInt(a, 16);
        text.append((char) hexVal).append(b);
    }
    return text.toString();
}

To do this, no need to depend 3-part library. Just use the java built-in library.

Assuming that we have a unicode '1F914',

1. firstly we convert it from hex to decimal using Integer.parseInt
2. then we pass the decimal representation to Character.toChars(), got a char array.

Java use UTF-16 to encode String. If a character that codepoint is over than 16 bit, using a char array to represent it.

3. After that,we new a sting by the char array. Finally we got a emoji : “🤔”

new String(Character.toChars(Integer.parseInt(unicode, 16)));

An alternate way of accomplishing this could be to make use of chars() introduced with Java 9, this can be used to iterate over the characters making sure any char which maps to a surrogate code point is passed through uninterpreted. This can be used as:-

String myString = "\u0048\u0065\u006C\u006C\u006F World";
myString.chars().forEach(a -> System.out.print((char)a));
// would print "Hello World"

Solution for Kotlin:

val sourceContent = File("test.txt").readText(Charset.forName("windows-1251"))
val result = String(sourceContent.toByteArray())

Kotlin uses UTF-8 everywhere as default encoding.

Method toByteArray() has default argument - Charsets.UTF_8.