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Concatenating JSTL

I have a HashMap in the controller:
HashMap<String, ArrayList<String> map = new HashMap<String, ArrayList<String>();
In the JSP page I want to access this through something like this:
<c:forEach var="list" items="${requestScope.list}">
<c:set var="testing" value="{requestScope.map}"></c:set>
<c:forEach var="anotherTesting" items="${testing['${list.item}']}">
<option><c:out value="${anotherTesting}"/></option>
</c:forEach>
</c:forEach>
Where list.item is a String but it is used for another process but I want it to be used to access the HashMap.
Is there a way to concatenate JSTL? Either map.key or map['key'] will do.

I guess simply this would work:
<c:forEach var="anotherTesting" items="${testing[list.item]}">
<option><c:out value="${anotherTesting}"/></option>
</c:forEach>
Notice the difference with and without quotes:
${testing[list.item]} is equivalent to testing.get(list.getItem());
${testing['list.item']} is equivalent to testing.get("list.item");.
Some Note:
You don't need to specify the scope to access the attributes, unless there is a conflict with the same name in different scopes. So, "${requestScope.list}" can be changed to ${list}, and "${requestScope.map}" can be changed to ${map}.
Please use a different name for var attribute of outer loop. May be listItem instead of list.
No need to set the map to a different variable. That <c:set...> is not needed. You can directly access the property of map attribute.
So, your loop can be modified to:
<c:forEach var="listItem" items="${list}">
<c:forEach var="anotherTesting" items="${map[listItem.item]}">
<option><c:out value="${anotherTesting}"/></option>
</c:forEach>
</c:forEach>

The code in ${...} is not JSTL but Expression Language. You don't need to c̶o̶n̶c̶a̶t̶e̶n̶a̶t̶e̶ nest EL ${} expressions, just add it cleanly.
Knowing this, the expression ${testing['${list.item}']} will be ${testing[list.item]}.
BUT note that this is not what you really want/need unless testing is indeed a Map<String, ArrayList<String>>, otherwise you will get unexpected results. From your code above, assuming requestScope.list is a List<Map<String, ArrayList<String>>>, then the code would be:
<c:forEach var="listItem" items="${list}">
<c:forEach var="innerString" items="${map[listItem.item]}">
<option><c:out value="${innerString}"/></option>
</c:forEach>
</c:forEach>
Note that ${list} is the same as ${requestScope.list} assuming there's no list attribute nor in page, session or application scope, similar for ${map}.

JSTL c:set not working as expected

I have a JSTL loop where I'm trying to check to see if a given variable is empty or not with a dynamic variable name. When I use c:set with page scope, the variable is not accessible to the if statement. However, when I set it using <% pageCotnext.setAttribute(...); %>, the variable is available.
<%
pageContext.setAttribute("alphaParA", "test");
pageContext.setAttribute("alphaParF", "test");
int i = 0;
%>
<ul class="alphadex_links">
<c:forEach var="i" begin="0" end="25" step="1" varStatus="status">
<c:set var="currentLetter" scope="page">&#${i+65}</c:set>
<c:set var="currentPar" scope="page">alphaPar${currentLetter}</c:set>
<% pageContext.setAttribute("currentPar", "alphaPar" + (char)('A' + i++)); %>
<li>
<c:choose>
<c:when test="${not empty pageScope[currentPar]}">
The test is always fails when I remove the pageContext.setAttribute block, however it succeeds for A and F as it should when the block is in. I'm very confused and can't find help anywhere.

It fails because HTML doesn't run at the moment JSTL runs. You're effectively passing a Java String &#65 to it instead of the desired character A which would be represented as such based on the HTML entity A when the HTML is retrieved and parsed by the webbrowser after Java/JSP/JSTL has done its job. Please note that your HTML entity is missing the closing semicolon, but this isn't the cause of your concrete problem.
As to the concrete functional requirement, sorry, you're out of luck with EL. It doesn't support char. Your best bet is to deal with strings like this:
<c:forEach items="${fn:split('A,B,C,D,E,F,G,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z', ',')}" var="currentLetter">
<c:set var="currentPar" value="alphaPar${currentLetter}" />
${pageScope[currentPar]}
</c:forEach>
If necessary, just autogenerate the letters as String[] in Java end and set it as application attribute.

How can I loop through each character in a String using JSTL?

How can I loop through each character in a String using JSTL?

Tricky use of fn:substring() would do
<c:forEach var="i" begin="0" end="${fn:length(str)}" step="1">
<c:out value="${fn:substring(str, i, i + 1)}" />
</c:forEach>

Late to the party, but EL 2.2 allows for instance method calls (more on that here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/7122669/2047962). This means that you could shorten Jigar Joshi's answer by a few characters:
<c:forEach var="i" begin="0" end="${fn:length(str)}" step="1">
<c:out value="${str.charAt(i)}" />
</c:forEach>
I only suggest this because it is a little more obvious what your code is doing.

i think you can't do that with JSTL's forEach. You need to write your own tag or an EL function. Here is a sample code how you write your custom tags:
http://www.java2s.com/Tutorial/Java/0360__JSP/CustomTagSupport.htm

Converting an ArrayList<someObjects> to an HTML table

I have a couple of ArrayLists with variable length and sometimes null. This ArrayList contains a bunch of objects.
The table should have columns based on (some) attributes of the object. And the table should be displayed on a jsp.
I have two ideas, one is to use a JSTL tag the other is to use JavaScript. And library suggestions are welcome.

JSTL is the standard, preferred way (unless you need to load it via ajax, for example)
<table>
<tr><td>Foo header</td><td>Bar header</td></tr>
<c:forEach items="${yourRequestScopedArrayList}" var="obj">
<tr>
<td>${obj.foo}</td>
<td>${obj.bar}</td>
</tr>
</c:forEach>
</table>

JSTL is better,
Javascript you should avoid as much as possible ,
I am not sure how you are going to render datatable using java script and Collection
How to use jstl with collection that has been demonstrated by Bozho in the same thread.

Javascript doesn't have access to the Java objects that live (I presume) on the server. The server code can make the ArrayLists available to the JSP which can then loop over them with a JSTL forEach tag.
How you make the ArrayLists "available" depends on the framework you're using, but the plain servlet way is just setting an attribute from the doPost method.
request.setAttribute("list1", arrayList1);
The loop would be something like
<table>
<tr><th>Column 1</th> <th>Column 2</th> <th>Column 3</th></tr>
<c:forEach var="row" items="${list1}">
<tr><td>${row.col1data}</td> <td>${row.col2data}</td> <td>${row.col3data}</td></tr>
</c:forEach>
</table>

conditional check in c:if always fails

The c:if test always fails for me and it never gets inside the loop. I am using the following namespaces
xmlns:fn="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/functions"
xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core"
The string ('array') to be split is "Tom and Jerry are GAP1 friends"
<s:decorate template="/layout/display-text.xhtml">
<c:set var="array" value="#{_mybean.value}"/>
<c:set var="space" value="#{fn:split(array, ' ')}"/>
<c:set var="len" value="#{fn:length(space)}"/>
<h:outputText value="total length = #{len}"/><br/>
<c:forEach begin="0" end="5" var="index">
<h:outputText value="index = #{index}, value = #{space[index]}"/><br/>
<c:set var="val" value="#{space[index]}"/>
<c:if test="#{fn:startsWith(val, 'GAP')}">
<h:outputText value="Found keyword parameter GAP" /><br/>
</c:if>
</c:forEach>
</s:decorate>

The JSTL core URI is invalid. As per the JSTL TLD it should be (note the extra /jsp):
xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core"
That said, mixing JSF with JSTL is never been a good idea. It won't always give results as you'd expect because they doesn't run in sync as you would expect from the coding. It's more that JSP/JSTL runs from top to bottom first and then hands over the produced result to JSF to process further from top to bottom again. That would cause some specific constructs to fail. Better use pure JSF components/attributes instead.
Instead of c:forEach, rather use Seam's a4j:repeat or Facelets' ui:repeat and instead of c:if make use of the rendered attribute of the JSF component which has to be toggled to show/hide. Instead of all that JSTL c:set, write appropriate code logic in managed bean constructor or action method or getter.
The JSTL functions (fn) taglib is however still highly valuable in JSF. You can keep using it.