Substring a string in JAVA

Question

Is possible to substring this String = "D:/test/for test/change.txt:D:/test/for test/further.txt:D:/test/for test/yandex.txt" to:

D:/test/for test/change.txt

D:/test/for test/further.txt

D:/test/for test/yandex.txt

Because are two column, I can not split() use ":".

i think the best logic is replace `:D:` to `{SPACE}D:` and split by space eg. `replace(":D:"," D:").split(" ");` — Dilermando Lima, Oct 05 '21 at 19:54
@DilermandoLima There is a space in the path itself as well. That's not going to work. — Ivar, Oct 05 '21 at 20:00

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 05 '21 at 20:14

It looks to me like you want to split on a colon whenever it's not followed by a slash. For that, the regular expression you need is a "negative lookahead", which means "not followed by". So you should write myString.split(":(?!/)") - the (?! ) is how to write the negative lookahead.

Arvind Kumar Avinash · Answer 2 · 2021-10-05T20:19:40.583

You can simply split it on :(?=[A-Za-z]:\/) which can be explained as

: : The character :
(?= : Start of lookahead
- [A-Za-z] : An alphabet
- :\\/ : The character : followed by /
) : End of lookahead

Demo:

import java.util.Arrays;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String str = "D:/test/for test/change.txt:D:/test/for test/further.txt:D:/test/for test/yandex.txt";
        String[] paths = str.split(":(?=[A-Za-z]:\\/)");
        Arrays.stream(paths).forEach(System.out::println);
    }
}

Output:

D:/test/for test/change.txt
D:/test/for test/further.txt
D:/test/for test/yandex.txt

ONLINE DEMO

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 05 '21 at 20:00

A simple regular expression below splits on ":" that are followed by a "driveletter:"

String s = "D:/test/for test/change.txt:D:/test/for test/further.txt:D:/test/for test/yandex.txt";
s.split(":(?=\\w:)");
==> String[3] { "D:/test/for test/change.txt"
              , "D:/test/for test/further.txt"
              , "D:/test/for test/yandex.txt" }

Note that this won't help if additional paths don't begin with driveletter:

Substring a string in JAVA

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