Java Error in String Split

Question

I want my program to accept search strings, for example: blue & berry (to find both of the words) bed | sleep | pillow(to find first one or the second one etc) When i recieve these string into my program, i use String.split() With "&" or "|" as separator.

String[] splited = input.split("|");

It works fine in the first case, but in the second case in separates each letter in the words, for example: b e d. Can i do something for it to be separated by words with this symbol, not just splited letter by letter?

Florent Bayle · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-29 21:15:18Z

5

split() is taking a regexp as argument. | means or, so you are splitting on "empty string or empty string", so it's splitting after every letter. If you want to split on "|" symbol, you have to escape it:

String[] splited = input.split("\\|");

answered Nov 29, 2014 at 21:15

Florent Bayle

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James · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-29 21:15:26Z

3

String.split(String) uses regular expressions and | is a special character in regex. Use \| to refer to a literal |, and \\ to escape the \ for Java. Resulting in \\|.

answered Nov 29, 2014 at 21:15

James

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