Java/Perl - split

split breaks up (or splits) a string into "tokens" or substrings according to a separator. split uses a regular expression as the separator.

Perl

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @fields = split /:/, "jim:bob:frank:steve";
foreach my $field (@fields) {
  print "$field\n";
}

my $string = "one two  three   four\tfive";
my @array = split /\s+/, $string;
foreach my $el(@array) {
  print "$el\n";
}

Output:

jim
bob
frank
steve
one
two
three
four
five


Java 1.4 added the split() method to the String class.

Java

public class Split
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    String string1 = "jim:bob:frank:steve";
    String[] names = string1.split(":");
    for(int i=0; i<names.length; i++)
      System.out.println(names[i]);

    String string2 = "one two  three   four\tfive";
    String[] words = string2.split("\\s+");
    for(int i=0; i<words.length; i++)
      System.out.println(words[i]);
  } 
}

It is also possible to use the java.util.StringTokenizer to break a string into tokens.

import java.util.StringTokenizer;

public class StringToke
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    String string1 = "jim:bob:frank:steve";
    StringTokenizer st1 = new StringTokenizer(string1,":");
    while(st1.hasMoreTokens()) 
      System.out.println(st1.nextToken());
   
    String string2 = "one two  three   four\tfive";
    StringTokenizer st2 = new StringTokenizer(string2);
    while(st2.hasMoreTokens()) 
      System.out.println(st2.nextToken());
  } 
}

Output:

jim
bob
frank
steve
one
two
three
four
five


If no regular expression pattern is used, split defaults to using white space as the separator. (both in Perl and Java)