I need to get the first character of a string, currently what I'm using is:

String firstCharacter = getTitle().substring(0, 1);

where getTitle() returns a String that can contain multiple words and also emojis, if the first character is an emoji and I use substring when I display firstCharacter instead of the emoji I get a question mark because using substring I cut the emoji characters.

What I want to do is:

• if the first word is an emoji retrieve and assign it to firstCharacter without using substring;

• if the first word is an actual word use the substring as I'm currently doing;

How can I possibly do it?

Android now supports Emojis with EmojiCompat

EmojiCompat is used to support Emojis in Android. You can initialize it by downloading it or packaging it within your app.

// Initialize with your desired config 
EmojiCompat.init(BundledEmojiCompatConfig(context))

// Check if EmojiCompat was successfully loaded
if (EmojiCompat.get().loadState == EmojiCompat.LOAD_STATE_SUCCEEDED) {
    EmojiCompat.get().hasEmojiGlyph(yourString)
}

Old Answer:

Emojis range can be found here

So, this would result in (not tested):

if(getTitle().substring(0,5)
    == ("/[\u2190-\u21FF] | [\u2600-\u26FF] | [\u2700-\u27BF] | 
          [\u3000-\u303F] | [\u1F300-\u1F64F] | [\u1F680-\u1F6FF]/g")){
    firstCharacter = getTitle().substring(0,5);
} else{
    firstCharacter = getTitle().substring(0,1);
}