.split()

Published Mar 30, 2022
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The .split() method takes a string and splits it into an array of substrings based on a pattern delimiter. The pattern provided is a regular expression that will split the original string based on where the pattern is matched in the string.

The method will throw a PatternSyntaxException for a pattern that is an invalid regular expression.

Syntax

String[] result = string.split(delimiter, limit);

Where string is the string to be split, and delimiter is a string containing a regular expression pattern.

The optional limit parameter is an integer, and has the following behavior:

  • limit > 0: .split() will return at most limit entries, stopping after limit-1 matches.
  • limit < 0: .split() will match as many times as possible, resulting in an array of any size.
  • limit = 0: .split() is the same as limit < 0 except that trailing empty strings will be discarded.

Example 1

The following uses the regular expression “\s+” which matches one or more whitespace characters.

public class Example{
public static void main(String args[]){
String words = "This is a string of words.";
String[] result = words.split("\\s+"); // Splits words on matching sequences of whitespace.
for(String w:result){
System.out.println(w);
}
}
}

This outputs the following:

This
is
a
string
of
words.

Example 2

This example uses the pattern “,\s*“ which matches a comma followed by zero or more whitespace characters, it also uses a limit parameter.

public class Example{
public static void main(String args[]){
String words = "This, is, a, comma,delimited, list, of, words";
String[] result = words.split(",\\s*",6); // Splits words on matching commas followed by arbitrary whitespace.
for(String w:result){
System.out.println(w);
}
}
}

This outputs the following:

This
is
a
comma
delimited
list, of, words

Example 3

This example shows the difference between a negative limit and a limit of zero.

public class Example{
public static void main(String args[]){
String words = "This,string,has,extra,commas,,,,";
String[] result1 = words.split(",",-2); // Split on each comma.
String[] result2 = words.split(",",0); // Split on each comma, but discard trailing empty strings.
System.out.println("Limit of -2 produces an array of length " + result1.length);
System.out.println("Limit of 0 produces an array of length " + result2.length);
}
}

This outputs the following:

Limit of -2 produces an array of length 9
Limit of 0 produces an array of length 5

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