Is there a way to get rid of accents and convert a whole string to regular letters?

I suggest Junidecode . It will handle not only 'Ł' and 'Ø', but it also works well for transcribing from other alphabets, such as Chinese, into Latin alphabet.

One of the best way using regex and Normalizer if you have no library is :

    public String flattenToAscii(String s) {
                if(s == null || s.trim().length() == 0)
                        return "";
                return Normalizer.normalize(s, Normalizer.Form.NFD).replaceAll("[\u0300-\u036F]", "");
}

This is more efficient than replaceAll("[^\p{ASCII}]", "")) and if you don't need diacritics (just like your example).

Otherwise, you have to use the p{ASCII} pattern.

Regards.

Since this solution is already available in StringUtils.stripAccents() at Maven Repository and working for Ł as mentioned by @DavidS. But I need this to be working for both Ø and Ł So modified as below. May be help full for others too.

Update

This is modified version of StringUtils.stripAccents(String obj), that contains old functionality along with handling both Ø and Ł chars.

public static String stripAccents(final String input) {
    if (input == null) {
        return null;
    }
    final StringBuilder decomposed = new StringBuilder(Normalizer.normalize(input, Normalizer.Form.NFD));
    for (int i = 0; i < decomposed.length(); i++) {
        if (decomposed.charAt(i) == '\u0141') {
            decomposed.setCharAt(i, 'L');
        } else if (decomposed.charAt(i) == '\u0142') {
            decomposed.setCharAt(i, 'l');
        }else if (decomposed.charAt(i) == '\u00D8') {
            decomposed.setCharAt(i, 'O');
        }else if (decomposed.charAt(i) == '\u00F8') {
            decomposed.setCharAt(i, 'o');
        }
    }
    // Note that this doesn't correctly remove ligatures...
    return Pattern.compile("\\p{InCombiningDiacriticalMarks}+").matcher(decomposed).replaceAll("");
}

Input string Ł Tĥïŝ ĩš â fůňķŷ Šťŕĭńġ Ø ø
output string L This is a funky String O o

I think the best solution is converting each char to HEX and replace it with another HEX. It's because there are 2 Unicode typing:

Composite Unicode
Precomposed Unicode

For example "Ồ" written by Composite Unicode is different from "Ồ" written by Precomposed Unicode. You can copy my sample chars and convert them to see the difference.

In Composite Unicode, "Ồ" is combined from 2 char: Ô (U+00d4) and ̀ (U+0300)
In Precomposed Unicode, "Ồ" is single char (U+1ED2)

I have developed this feature for some banks to convert the info before sending it to core-bank (usually don't support Unicode) and faced this issue when the end-users use multiple Unicode typing to input the data. So I think, converting to HEX and replace it is the most reliable way.

A fast and safer way

public static String removeDiacritics(String str) {
    if (str == null)
        return null;
    if (str.isEmpty())
        return "";
    
    int len = str.length();
    StringBuilder sb
        = new StringBuilder(len);
    
    //iterate string codepoints
    for (int i = 0; i < len; ) {
        int codePoint = str.codePointAt(i);
        int charCount
            = Character.charCount(codePoint);
        
        if (charCount > 1) {
            for (int j = 0; j < charCount; j++)
                sb.append(str.charAt(i + j));
            i += charCount;
            continue;
        }
        else if (codePoint <= 127) {
            sb.append((char)codePoint);
            i++;
            continue;
        }
        
        sb.append(
            java.text.Normalizer
                .normalize(
                    Character.toString((char)codePoint),
                    java.text.Normalizer.Form.NFD)
                        .charAt(0));
        i++;
    }
    
    return sb.toString();
}

Faced the same issue, here's solution using Kotlin extension

   val String.stripAccents: String
    get() = Regex("\\p{InCombiningDiacriticalMarks}+")
        .replace(
            Normalizer.normalize(this, Normalizer.Form.NFD),
            ""
        )

usage

val textWithoutAccents = "some accented string".stripAccents

In case anyone is strugling to do this in kotlin, this code works like a charm. To avoid inconsistencies I also use .toUpperCase and Trim(). then i cast this function:

   fun stripAccents(s: String):String{

   if (s == null) {
      return "";
   }

val chars: CharArray = s.toCharArray()

var sb = StringBuilder(s)
var cont: Int = 0

while (chars.size > cont) {
    var c: kotlin.Char
    c = chars[cont]
    var c2:String = c.toString()
   //these are my needs, in case you need to convert other accents just Add new entries aqui
    c2 = c2.replace("Ã", "A")
    c2 = c2.replace("Õ", "O")
    c2 = c2.replace("Ç", "C")
    c2 = c2.replace("Á", "A")
    c2 = c2.replace("Ó", "O")
    c2 = c2.replace("Ê", "E")
    c2 = c2.replace("É", "E")
    c2 = c2.replace("Ú", "U")

    c = c2.single()
    sb.setCharAt(cont, c)
    cont++

}

return sb.toString()

}

to use these fun cast the code like this:

     var str: String
     str = editText.text.toString() //get the text from EditText
     str = str.toUpperCase().trim()

     str = stripAccents(str) //call the function