Question

I have this simple problem: once I retrieve a mail text, sometimes it happens that Html.fromHtml cannot parse correctly the string.

I’ll give you an example. This is the HTML string:

&#‪8211‬;&#‪8211‬;&#‪8211‬;&#‪8211‬;&

It needs to be something like this:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Is there a way in Android to achieve that? Do I need to use Regular Expressions?

Thank you so much.

Answer 1

You can filter out the hidden characters (in this case) with:

myString = myString.replaceAll( "[\\u202C\\u202A]", "" );

After that it’s just:

Html.fromHtml(myString);

And it will work in html context. Or if you want the real em dash characters:

Html.fromHtml(Html.fromHtml(myString));

Demo of the concept: http://jsfiddle.net/CGzDc/ (javascript, you will have to use code in this answer for java)