Java split string

last modified July 8, 2023

Java split string tutorial shows how to split strings in Java. We use String's split, Pattern's, splitAsStream and Guava Splitter's on methods.

The String has a built-in method for splitting strings:

String[] split(String regex) - splits the string around matches of the given regular expression
String[] split(String regex, int limit) - splits this string around matches of the given regular expression

The method returns an array of split strings.

In addition to the split method, the Pattern has also the splitAsStream method.

Split phone number

In the first example, we split a phone number.

StringSplitEx.java

package com.zetcode;

import java.util.Arrays;

public class StringSplitEx {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        var phoneNumber = "202-555-0154";

        String[] output = phoneNumber.split("-");

        Arrays.stream(output).forEach(part -> System.out.println(part));
    }
}

Phone numbers are often separated with the dash (-) character. The program splits the number into numerical values with split.

var phoneNumber = "202-555-0154";

This is the phone number.

String[] output = phoneNumber.split("-");

We split the string by the dash character; the split method returns an array of substrings split from the main string.

Arrays.stream(output).forEach(part -> System.out.println(part));

We show the split parts to the console.

202
555
0154

Split string with dot character

A dot character has a special meaning in regular expression syntax. To split a string by a dot, we need to escape it or use Pattern.quote.

StringSplitDotEx

package com.zetcode;

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class StringSplitDotEx {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        var address = "127.0.0.1";

//        String[] output = address.split("\\.");
        String[] output = address.split(Pattern.quote("."));

        Arrays.stream(output).forEach(part -> System.out.println(part));
    }
}

The program splits an IP address.

Splitting string with limit

The limit option controls the number of split substrings.

SplitStringLimitEx.java

package com.zetcode;

import java.util.Arrays;

public class SplitStringLimitEx {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        var names = "Jane-Paul-Ferenc-David-Robert-Julia";

        var output = names.split("-", 4);

        Arrays.stream(output).forEach(System.out::println);
    }
}

The program splits the names string into four parts.

Jane
Paul
Ferenc
David-Robert-Julia

Splitting and trimming strings

We often need to remove the white space characters around the strings.

SplitStringTrimEx.java

package com.zetcode;

import java.util.Arrays;

public class SplitStringTrimEx {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        var input = " wood, falcon\t, sky, forest\n";

        var output = input.trim().split("\\s*,\\s*");

        Arrays.stream(output).forEach(System.out::println);
    }
}

To remove the white spaces, we use trim.

var output = input.trim().split("\\s*,\\s*");

The regular expression splits the input string by a comma character, which might have any number of white spaces before or after the comma.

Split string with Pattern

We can split strings with Pattern in a functional way using streams.

PatternCompileEx.java

package com.zetcode;

import java.util.regex.Pattern;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;

public class PatternCompileEx {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        var phoneNumber = "202-555-0154";

        var output = Pattern.compile("-")
                .splitAsStream(phoneNumber)
                .collect(Collectors.toList());

        output.forEach(System.out::println);
    }
}

The example splits a phone number with Pattern's splitAsStream method.

var output = Pattern.compile("-")
    .splitAsStream(phoneNumber)
    .collect(Collectors.toList());

We compile a regular expression containing the character we use for splitting. On the compiled expression, we call splitAsStream to get a stream of split substrings. Finally, we collect the stream into a list.

Split string with Guava's Splitter

The following example uses Google's Guava library to split a string. It uses the Splitter class.

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
    <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
    <version>27.0.1-jre</version>
</dependency>

We need to include Guava's dependency.

SplitStringGuavaEx.java

package com.zetcode;

import com.google.common.base.Splitter;

public class SplitStringGuavaEx {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        var input = " falcon, \t\tforest\t, \t\t, moderate, sky\n";

        var result = Splitter.on(',')
                .trimResults()
                .omitEmptyStrings()
                .splitToList(input);

        result.forEach(System.out::println);
    }
}

The program splits a string with Guava's Splitter.

var result = Splitter.on(',')
        .trimResults()
        .omitEmptyStrings()
        .splitToList(input);

We extract the non-overlapping substrings from an input string with Splitter.on. The trimResults removes the white space characters and the omitEmptyStrings removes potential empty strings. The result is transformed into a list.

In this article we have shown how to split strings in Java.

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My name is Jan Bodnar and I am a passionate programmer with many years of programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. So far, I have written over 1400 articles and 8 e-books. I have over eight years of experience in teaching programming.

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