Splitting of a string with | delimited

Question

"abc|xyz|".split("\\|").foreach(println) ===> only displaying abc and xyx

println("abc|xyz|".split("\\|").length) ===> length should be 3 but is showing as 2.

When I split a string with pipe delimited, and the value of the last column is empty. The split function is ignoring the last value.

The `split` function is Java's String.split, so I'm marking this as duplicate of a similar Java question with a great detailed answer. — Tzach Zohar, May 07 '18 at 14:39
What do you expect for this last value? There is nothing there except for a zero width boundary marker, hence, nothing gets added to the array of split strings. — Tim Biegeleisen, May 07 '18 at 14:39

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered May 07 '18 at 14:39

3

You should be using limit with split function as -1 which will give you as expected

"abc|xyz|".split("\\|", -1).foreach(println)

Which results in output as abc, xyx and ''

println("abc|xyz|".split("\\|", -1).length)

This results in length as 3

answered May 07 '18 at 14:39

koiralo

Perhaps you could explain why this works. From a pure regex split point of view, rightfully nothing _should_ be in the third position, because there is only a boundary marker in between the last pipe and end of string. – Tim Biegeleisen May 07 '18 at 14:42

1 Answers1