How to split a String by space

Question

I need to split my String by spaces. For this I tried:

str = "Hello I'm your String";
String[] splited = str.split(" ");

But it doesn't seem to work.

Answer 1

What you have should work. If, however, the spaces provided are defaulting to... something else? You can use the whitespace regex:

str = "Hello I'm your String";
String[] splited = str.split("\\s+");

This will cause any number of consecutive spaces to split your string into tokens.

Answer 2

While the accepted answer is good, be aware that you will end up with a leading empty string if your input string starts with a white space. For example, with:

String str = " Hello I'm your String";
String[] splitStr = str.split("\\s+");

The result will be:

splitStr[0] == "";
splitStr[1] == "Hello";
splitStr[2] == "I'm";
splitStr[3] == "Your";
splitStr[4] == "String";

So you might want to trim your string before splitting it:

String str = " Hello I'm your String";
String[] splitStr = str.trim().split("\\s+");

[edit]

In addition to the trim caveat, you might want to consider the unicode non-breaking space character (U+00A0). This character prints just like a regular space in string, and often lurks in copy-pasted text from rich text editors or web pages. They are not handled by .trim() which tests for characters to remove using c <= ' '; \s will not catch them either.

Instead, you can use \p{Blank} but you need to enable unicode character support as well which the regular split won't do. For example, this will work: Pattern.compile("\\p{Blank}", UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS).split(words) but it won't do the trim part.

The following demonstrates the problem and provides a solution. It is far from optimal to rely on regex for this, but now that Java has 8bit / 16bit byte representation, an efficient solution for this becomes quite long.

public class SplitStringTest
{
    static final Pattern TRIM_UNICODE_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("^\\p{Blank}*(.*)\\p{Blank}$", UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS);
    static final Pattern SPLIT_SPACE_UNICODE_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("\\p{Blank}", UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS);

    public static String[] trimSplitUnicodeBySpace(String str)
    {
        Matcher trimMatcher = TRIM_UNICODE_PATTERN.matcher(str);
        boolean ignore = trimMatcher.matches(); // always true but must be called since it does the actual matching/grouping
        return SPLIT_SPACE_UNICODE_PATTERN.split(trimMatcher.group(1));
    }

    @Test
    void test()
    {
        String words = " Hello I'm\u00A0your String\u00A0";
        // non-breaking space here --^ and there -----^

        String[] split = words.split(" ");
        String[] trimAndSplit = words.trim().split(" ");
        String[] splitUnicode = SPLIT_SPACE_UNICODE_PATTERN.split(words);
        String[] trimAndSplitUnicode = trimSplitUnicodeBySpace(words);

        System.out.println("words: [" + words + "]");
        System.out.println("split: [" + Arrays.stream(split).collect(Collectors.joining("][")) + "]");
        System.out.println("trimAndSplit: [" + Arrays.stream(trimAndSplit).collect(Collectors.joining("][")) + "]");
        System.out.println("splitUnicode: [" + Arrays.stream(splitUnicode).collect(Collectors.joining("][")) + "]");
        System.out.println("trimAndSplitUnicode: [" + Arrays.stream(trimAndSplitUnicode).collect(Collectors.joining("][")) + "]");
    }
}

Results in:

words: [ Hello I'm your String ]
split: [][Hello][I'm your][String ]
trimAndSplit: [Hello][I'm your][String ]
splitUnicode: [][Hello][I'm][your][String]
trimAndSplitUnicode: [Hello][I'm][your][String]

Answer 3

I do believe that putting a regular expression in the str.split parentheses should solve the issue. The Java String.split() method is based upon regular expressions so what you need is:

str = "Hello I'm your String";
String[] splitStr = str.split("\\s+");

Answer 4

Use Stringutils.split() to split the string by whites paces. For example StringUtils.split("Hello World") returns "Hello" and "World";

In order to solve the mentioned case we use split method like this

String split[]= StringUtils.split("Hello I'm your String");

when we print the split array the output will be :

Hello

I'm

your

String

For complete example demo check here

Answer 5

Try

String[] splited = str.split("\\s");

http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/regex/pre_char_classes.html

Answer 6

if somehow you don't wanna use String split method then you can use StringTokenizer class in Java as..

    StringTokenizer tokens = new StringTokenizer("Hello I'm your String", " ");
    String[] splited = new String[tokens.countTokens()];
    int index = 0;
    while(tokens.hasMoreTokens()){
        splited[index] = tokens.nextToken();
        ++index;
    }

Answer 7

Try this one

    String str = "This is String";
    String[] splited = str.split("\\s+");

    String split_one=splited[0];
    String split_second=splited[1];
    String split_three=splited[2];

   Log.d("Splited String ", "Splited String" + split_one+split_second+split_three);

Answer 8

OK, so we have to do splitting as you already got the answer I would generalize it.

If you want to split any string by spaces, delimiter(special chars).

First, remove the leading space as they create most of the issues.

str1 = "    Hello I'm your       String    ";
str2 = "    Are you serious about this question_  boy, aren't you?   ";

First remove the leading space which can be space, tab etc.

String s = str1.replaceAll("^\\s+","");//starting with whitespace one or more

Now if you want to split by space or any special char.

String[] sa = s.split("[^\\w]+");//split by any non word char

But as w contains [a-zA-Z_0-9] ,so if you want to split by underscore(_) also use

 String[] sa = s.split("[!,? ._'@]+");//for str2 after removing leading space

Answer 9

An alternative way would be:

import java.util.regex.Pattern;

...

private static final Pattern SPACE = Pattern.compile(" ");
String[] arr = SPACE.split(str); // str is the string to be split

Saw it here

Answer 10

You can separate string using the below code:

   String theString="Hello world";

   String[] parts = theString.split(" ");

   String first = parts[0];//"hello"

   String second = parts[1];//"World"

Answer 11

Very Simple Example below:

Hope it helps.

String str = "Hello I'm your String";
String[] splited = str.split(" ");
var splited = str.split(" ");
var splited1=splited[0]; //Hello
var splited2=splited[1]; //I'm
var splited3=splited[2]; //your
var splited4=splited[3]; //String

Answer 12

Since it's been a while since these answers were posted, here's another more current way to do what's asked:

List<String> output = new ArrayList<>();
try (Scanner sc = new Scanner(inputString)) {
    while (sc.hasNext()) output.add(sc.next());
}

Now you have a list of strings (which is arguably better than an array); if you do need an array, you can do output.toArray(new String[0]);

Answer 13

Not only white space, but my solution also solves the invisible characters as well.

str = "Hello I'm your String";
String[] splited = str.split("\p{Z}");

Answer 14

Here is a method to trim a String that has a "," or white space

private String shorterName(String s){
        String[] sArr = s.split("\\,|\\s+");
        String output = sArr[0];

        return output;
    }

Answer 15

Simple to Spit String by Space

    String CurrentString = "First Second Last";
    String[] separated = CurrentString.split(" ");

    for (int i = 0; i < separated.length; i++) {

         if (i == 0) {
             Log.d("FName ** ", "" + separated[0].trim() + "\n ");
         } else if (i == 1) {
             Log.d("MName ** ", "" + separated[1].trim() + "\n ");
         } else if (i == 2) {
             Log.d("LName ** ", "" + separated[2].trim());
         }
     }

Answer 16

Join solutions in one!

public String getFirstNameFromFullName(String fullName){
    int indexString = fullName.trim().lastIndexOf(' ');
    return (indexString != -1)  ? fullName.trim().split("\\s+")[0].toUpperCase() : fullName.toUpperCase();
}

Answer 17

Single quotes for char instead of double

String[] splited = str.split(' ');