Splitting string with pipe character ("|")

Question

I'm not able to split values from this string:

"Food 1 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 1 "

Here's my current code:

String rat_values = "Food 1 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 1 ";
String[] value_split = rat_values.split("|");

Output

[, F, o, o, d, , 1, , |, , S, e, r, v, i, c, e, , 3, , |, , A, t, m, o, s, p, h, e, r, e, , 3, , |, , V, a, l, u, e, , f, o, r, , m, o, n, e, y, , 1, ]

Expected output

Food 1
Service 3
Atmosphere 3
Value for money 1

score 676 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 03 '14 at 10:20

676

| is a metacharacter in regex. You'd need to escape it:

String[] value_split = rat_values.split("\\|");

answered Feb 03 '14 at 10:20

devnull

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1

It took me like 15 minutes to track this down as I was mysteriously getting the same problem and thought it was related to my newbie (for java 8) use of `Array.AsList` or `Arrays.stream` - thanks devnull! – JGlass Sep 19 '18 at 19:50
This is the correct answer technically but the answer by Prateek is far more complete. – Mr Chow Nov 16 '21 at 19:04
@devnull - This does fails to pick last element if we have value as empty. e.g. If we have A||B|C|| -> It will give us array{A,"",B,C} while it should be {A,"",B,C,"",""} – Ashish Ratan Apr 01 '22 at 17:02

score 99 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 03 '14 at 10:41

Using Pattern.quote()

String[] value_split = rat_values.split(Pattern.quote("|"));

//System.out.println(Arrays.toString(rat_values.split(Pattern.quote("|")))); //(FOR GETTING OUTPUT)

Using Escape characters(for metacharacters)

String[] value_split = rat_values.split("\\|");
//System.out.println(Arrays.toString(rat_values.split("\\|"))); //(FOR GETTING OUTPUT)

Using StringTokenizer(For avoiding regular expression issues)

public static String[] splitUsingTokenizer(String Subject, String Delimiters) 
{
     StringTokenizer StrTkn = new StringTokenizer(Subject, Delimiters);
     ArrayList<String> ArrLis = new ArrayList<String>(Subject.length());
     while(StrTkn.hasMoreTokens())
     {
       ArrLis.add(StrTkn.nextToken());
     }
     return ArrLis.toArray(new String[0]);
}

Using Pattern class(java.util.regex.Pattern)

Arrays.asList(Pattern.compile("\\|").split(rat_values))
//System.out.println(Arrays.asList(Pattern.compile("\\|").split(rat_values))); //(FOR GETTING OUTPUT)

Output

[Food 1 ,  Service 3 ,  Atmosphere 3 ,  Value for money 1 ]

For the second version, would you call it as `splitUsingTokenizer("Food 1 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 1 ", "|")` ? — Ciprian Tomoiagă, Apr 21 '17 at 08:26

score 23 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 03 '14 at 10:21

23

Or.. Pattern#quote:

String[] value_split = rat_values.split(Pattern.quote("|"));

This is happening because String#split accepts a regex:

| has a special meaning in regex.

quote will return a String representation for the regex.

answered Feb 03 '14 at 10:21

Maroun

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Upvoted for actually doing RCA – Karan Kaw Dec 15 '17 at 15:16

Anirudha · Answer 4 · 2016-04-27T16:32:02.033

15

split takes regex as a parameter.| has special meaning in regex.. use \\| instead of | to escape it.

edited Apr 27 '16 at 16:32

answered Feb 03 '14 at 10:20

Anirudha

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score 5 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 03 '14 at 10:21

5

String rat_values = "Food 1 | Service 3 | Atmosphere 3 | Value for money 1 ";
    String[] value_split = rat_values.split("\\|");
    for (String string : value_split) {

        System.out.println(string);

    }

answered Feb 03 '14 at 10:21

Kick

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Splitting string with pipe character ("|")

Output

Expected output

5 Answers5

Using Pattern.quote()

Using Escape characters(for metacharacters)

Using StringTokenizer(For avoiding regular expression issues)

Using Pattern class(java.util.regex.Pattern)

Output

Linked

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