Question

A java String variable whose value is

String path = "http://cdn.gs.com/new/downloads/Q22010MVR_PressRelease.pdf.null"

I want to remove the last four characters i.e., .null. Which method I can use in order to split.

Answer 1

I think you want to remove the last five characters (‘.’, ‘n’, ‘u’, ‘l’, ‘l’):

path = path.substring(0, path.length() - 5);

Note how you need to use the return value – strings are immutable, so substring (and other methods) don’t change the existing string – they return a reference to a new string with the appropriate data.

Or to be a bit safer:

if (path.endsWith(".null")) {
  path = path.substring(0, path.length() - 5);
}

However, I would try to tackle the problem higher up. My guess is that you’ve only got the “.null” because some other code is doing something like this:

path = name + "." + extension;

where extension is null. I would conditionalise that instead, so you never get the bad data in the first place.

(As noted in a question comment, you really should look through the String API. It’s one of the most commonly-used classes in Java, so there’s no excuse for not being familiar with it.)