API Contents - SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java Platform SE6 - page 321

hi
hello
welcome
The split method is useful for parsing character sequences where the delimiter is
defi ned as a regular expression, as demonstrated by the following statements. See if you can
determine the output of this code:
String data = “3035551212,123 Main St.\tDenver,CO:50431”;
String [] results = data.split(“[;,:\\t]”);
for(String result : results) {
System.out.println(result);
}
The regular expression [;,:\\t] splits the String at every semicolon, comma, colon, or
tab. The output of the code is
3035551212
123 Main St.
Denver
CO
50431
Limiting the Results of the split Method
The split method also has an overloaded version that takes in an int that limits the
number of times the regular expression is applied to the String . If you specify a limit,
after the limit is reached the remaining characters are placed in the last element of the
String array. For example, the following code invokes split with a limit of 3, so the
resulting array will not be larger than three elements. See if you can determine the output:
String s = “abc,def,g,hi,jklm,o”;
String [] array = s.split(“,”, 3);
for(String x : array) {
System.out.println(x);
}
The ”abc” and ”def” are split into the array and the remaining characters are put in a
String in the third element of the array. The output of the code is
abc
def
g,hi,jklm,o