How to split a string by " | " in split method of String class in Java

Question

I would like to split a String by " | " in Java. I found split method of String class and it expects a regex expression for split delimeter but I don't know how to form a regex expression for " | ".

For example, a string is "AA | BB | CC" and I would like to get only AA, BB and CC as a string array.

Answer 1

String string = "AA|BB|CC";
String[] arr = string.split("\\|");
for (String s : arr) {
    System.out.println(s);
}

The above code prints:

AA
BB
CC

Answer 2

Use a regular expression for that, but the | char is a special char so you must scape it.

"AA | BB | CC".split("\\s*\\|\\s*");

Answer 3

It is string.split("\\|") (pipe must be escaped).

Answer 4

| is a special character in a regexp so you have to escape it.

Try: string.split("\\|")

Answer 5

The regular expression passed to the split method should be: \\|.

String text = "AA | BB | CC";
text.split("\\|")); // [AA ,  BB ,  CC]

If you want to get rid of the spaces then:

text.split("\\s*\\|\\s*")); // [AA, BB, CC]

Answer 6

| is an keyword in RegEX.

String.split() takes RegEx as argument. You have to escape it. You can do this.

string.split(" \\| ");

Answer 7

string.split("\\|") does the work.

• split() splits the string according to regex
• \ is needed to escape the regex' meaning of the pipe as "or"
• second back slash is need to escape the first back slash for java compiler.