What is the best way to get the first letter from a string in Java, returned as a string of length 1?

Question

Assume the following:

String example      = "something";
String firstLetter  = "";

Are there differences to be aware of with the following ways of assigning firstLetter that could impact performance; which would be best, and why?

firstLetter = String.valueOf(example.charAt(0));
firstLetter = Character.toString(example.charAt(0));
firstLetter = example.substring(0, 1);

Answer 1

I tried all three methods:

• String.valueOf

• Character.toString

• substring

And came to know that the fastest method to get the first letter of any string in Java, based on performance is the “substring” method.

Here is the code:

     String example = "something";

    String firstLetter  = "";

    long l=System.nanoTime();

    firstLetter = String.valueOf(example.charAt(0));

    System.out.println("String.valueOf: "+ (System.nanoTime()-l));

    l=System.nanoTime();

    firstLetter = Character.toString(example.charAt(0));

    System.out.println("Character.toString: "+ (System.nanoTime()-l));

    l=System.nanoTime();

    firstLetter = example.substring(0, 1);

    System.out.println("substring: "+ (System.nanoTime()-l));

Note: nanoTime() - The java.lang.System.nanoTime() method returns the current time value in nanoseconds, basically used to make a comparison between the two methods.

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