I have a file with content
1|yes|
2|yes|
3|yes|
4|yes|
5|yes|
6|yes|
7|yes|
8|yes|
9|yes|
10|yes|
11|yes|
12|yes|
13|yes|
14|yes|
15|yes|
I use java's String[] tokens = split("|"); to split each line, but it returns (for example splitting "10|yes|") [1,0,|,y,e,s,|]. It seems instead of splitting by "|", it splits every character. Anyone has any idea on it? Thanks!
split accepts a regular expression. | has a specific meaning in regular expressions, it expresses an alternation. To actually split on |, you have to escape it in the regex with a backslash. Since you specify the regex using a string literal, and backslashes are special in string literals, you have to escape that with another backslash:
String[] tokens = str.split("\\|");
In the general case, if you want to use the contents of a string literally, you can use Pattern.quote to automatically escape any special characters. You don't really need it here, but it's useful for end-user-entered values:
String[] tokens = str.split(Pattern.quote(stringToSplitOnLiterally));
