Splitting a string by delimiter without any variables?

Question

Can you split a string in Java without storing what has been split into variables? (Assignment requirement :()

I have tried things which worked on other programming languages however nothing I try seems to work:

(Attempting to see if the second item in a space delimited string (x) is +)

if ((x.split.(" ")).(1) = "+") {
            // Do something
        }

if ((x.split.(1).(" ")) = "+") {
            // Do something
        }

Can you quote, word for word, the requirement? `String#split(..)` returns an value of type `String[]`. — Sotirios Delimanolis, Nov 10 '14 at 21:24
You must NOT declare any variables or make any methods which are not in this class. You may use classes from the Java library but the outputs must be stored in existing variables. The only variable available to use is a parameter string called x and a double called x — Thahleel al-Aleem, Nov 10 '14 at 21:25
also x.split.(" ")).(1) = "+") is purely wrong wrong wrong! Crying out for syntactical errors. You need `if (x.split(" ")[1]).equals("+")` — ha9u63a7, Nov 10 '14 at 21:25
@user2177940 IMHO this is an artificial constraint and an extremely poor assignment. If you don't store the result of `split` in a variable then you will inevitably end up _repeating_ the split call to get the other elements. This is poor practise and violates the DRY ("Don't Repeat Yourself") principle. — Alnitak, Nov 10 '14 at 21:28
You can't have two local parameters/variables with the same name. — Sotirios Delimanolis, Nov 10 '14 at 21:28

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

5

Well, what is returned is of type String[]. So if you know that there will be two items, you can reference it as an array..

if(x.split(" ")[1].equals("+"))

Extra Reading

You should look at String Comparison.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

Community

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answered Nov 10 '14 at 21:24

christopher

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It isn't _like_ an array, it _is_ an array. The only risk is an `ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException` – Alnitak Nov 10 '14 at 21:26
@user2177940 I put an extra `.` in by accident. Updated. – christopher Nov 10 '14 at 21:28
@user2177940 there shouldn't be any dot between methods name and its arguments like in code from your question `split.(" ")`. – Pshemo Nov 10 '14 at 21:29

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 10 '14 at 22:06

1

String.split returns an array, so this is how it could be done. Note the use of '.equals()'. In Java the == operator checks if the pointer value is the same.

if (x.split.(" ")[1].equals("+")) {
    // Do something
}

(And of course this could throw an out of bounds exception if the split wouldn't make an array of size >= 2)

edited Nov 10 '14 at 22:06

David Conrad

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answered Nov 10 '14 at 21:32

eigil

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Splitting a string by delimiter without any variables?

2 Answers2