Java String to Char Array Conversion

There are a couple ways we can convert a string into an array of characters in Java. The technique you’d use depends on your use case. Let’s take a look at the available options.

1. Using String.toCharArray() method - Converts the whole String
2. Using String.getChars(…) method - Converts only a subset of String

1. Using String.toCharArray() method

You can use the toCharArray() method of the String class to convert it to an array i.e. char[]. When you call this method, it returns a new character array corresponding to the string. Use this method when you want the entire string to be converted to a character array e.g. if a method in an older library requires that you pass it character array and you have a string. Let’s take a look at an example.

package com.codeahoy.ex;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String str = "CodeAhoy";

        // Convert String to char array
        char [] charArray = str.toCharArray();

        System.out.println("Length of charArray: "
                + charArray.length);

        for (char c: charArray) {
            System.out.println(c);
        }
    }
}

Output

Length of charArray: 8
C
o
d
e
A
h
o
y

2. Using String.getChars(…) method

There’s another, slightly more involved, way of converting a string to an array of characters: String.getChars(…). Let’s take a look at JavaDocs:

public void getChars​(int srcBegin,
                     int srcEnd,
                     char[] dst,
                     int dstBegin)

It copies characters of a string from srcBegin to srcEnd to the dst char array starting at index dstBegin. This method is useful if you want to convert only a subset of string to character array, instead of the whole thing.

package com.codeahoy.ex;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String str = "CodeAhoy Articles on Java";

        // Create array big enough to fit 'CodeAhoy'
        char[] destArray = new char[8];

        // Copy 'CodeAhoy' from string to char array
        str.getChars(0, 8, destArray, 0);
        System.out.println(destArray);
    }
}

That’s all. We looked at two way of converting a String to char[] in Java. Please keep in mind that if you just need a single letter from a string as character, you can use the charAt(index) method which will return the char value at the specified position in the String, that is,

String str = "CodeAhoy";
System.out.println(str.charAt(4)); // Prints 'A'

If you’re interested, the following video is a good introducion to the char type in Java. See you next time!