Trying to ignore spaces when comparing strings

Question

I am writing a program where an answer entered by a user is compared to an answer held in a database. I have got it working but I can't get it to ignore 'spaces' or 'carriage returns'. Please can you have a look at my code and let me know what I can do to get this working.
Thanks in advance
Jes
public class DBHandler {
public DBHandler(String aQuestNum, String studentAnswer) {
JOptionPane jop = new JOptionPane();
JOptionPane jop2 = new JOptionPane();
try {
DriverManager.registerDriver(new sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver());
Connection aConnection = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:EnquiryTest", "", "");
Statement aStatement = aConnection.createStatement();
ResultSet aSet = aStatement.executeQuery ("SELECT * FROM EnquiryTestTable2 WHERE questionNum = '" + aQuestNum +"'");
while (aSet.next()) {
String tutorAnswer = aSet.getString("TAnswer");
int test = tutorAnswer.compareTo(studentAnswer);
if(test == 0)
jop2.showMessageDialog(null,"Right Answer Well Done!");
else
jop.showMessageDialog(null,"Wrong Answer Try Again!");
aConnection.close();
catch (SQLException e) { System.exit(9);}
}

Answer 1

My suggestion is to loop through the student answer ( make a copy of it if you need it for other purposes ) and remove all the spaces and carriage returns and then compare them. Here's an example:
StringBuffer tempBuffer( studentAnswer );
while( tempBuffer.indexOf( " " ) != -1 )
tempBuffer.deleteCharAt( tempBuffer.indexOf( " " ) );
You could use this to also check for newline characters \t and carriage returns ( not sure what ascii character is used for that ). Also the String method .trim() will remove all whitespace before and after the string ( but not say, spaces between words ).