Split String into an array of String

Question

I'm trying to find a way to split a String into an array of String(s), and I need to split it whenever a white spice is encountered, example

"hi i'm paul"

into"

"hi" "i'm" "paul"

How do you represent white spaces in split() method using RegularExpression?

why do you even need regular expression for that? couldn't you just do `String[] myList = myString.split(" ");` — Mohamed Nuur, May 22 '11 at 06:22
There is a tool called Visual REGEXP (http://laurent.riesterer.free.fr/regexp/) it can help you visualise the result of you regexp (perl regexp that is, but more or less all lang is using perl regexp so that is not a problem) — Johan, May 22 '11 at 06:29
"i dont know that much yet about RegExp" - sounds like you need to remedy that, because asking someone else to write your regexes for you is not sustainable. — Stephen C, May 22 '11 at 06:44

score 53 · Accepted Answer · answered May 22 '11 at 06:22

53

You need a regular expression like "\\s+", which means: split whenever at least one whitespace is encountered. The full Java code is:

try {
    String[] splitArray = input.split("\\s+");
} catch (PatternSyntaxException ex) {
    // 
}

answered May 22 '11 at 06:22

Staffan Nöteberg

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@Gabe: I don't think so. He wants anything, except whitespeces. For example he wants the apostrophe in "i'm" to be kept together with the i and the m. – Staffan Nöteberg May 22 '11 at 06:29
Oops, I meant `\s+`! (as you have it now) – Gabe May 22 '11 at 06:45

kuriouscoder · Answer 2 · 2011-05-22T23:45:05.487

7

String[] result = "hi i'm paul".split("\\s+"); to split across one or more cases.

Or you could take a look at Apache Common StringUtils. It has StringUtils.split(String str) method that splits string using white space as delimiter. It also has other useful utility methods

edited May 22 '11 at 23:45

answered May 22 '11 at 06:27

kuriouscoder

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Split String into an array of String

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