How to split a String by space

I need to split my String by spaces. For this I tried:

str = "Hello I'm your String"; String[] splited = str.split(" "); 

But it doesn't seem to work.

17 Answers

What you have should work. If, however, the spaces provided are defaulting to... something else? You can use the whitespace regex:

str = "Hello I'm your String"; String[] splited = str.split("\\s+"); 

This will cause any number of consecutive spaces to split your string into tokens.

While the accepted answer is good, be aware that you will end up with a leading empty string if your input string starts with a white space. For example, with:

String str = " Hello I'm your String"; String[] splitStr = str.split("\\s+"); 

The result will be:

splitStr[0] == ""; splitStr[1] == "Hello"; splitStr[2] == "I'm"; splitStr[3] == "Your"; splitStr[4] == "String"; 

So you might want to trim your string before splitting it:

String str = " Hello I'm your String"; String[] splitStr = str.trim().split("\\s+"); 

[edit]

In addition to the trim caveat, you might want to consider the unicode non-breaking space character (U+00A0). This character prints just like a regular space in string, and often lurks in copy-pasted text from rich text editors or web pages. They are not handled by .trim() which tests for characters to remove using c <= ' '; \s will not catch them either.

Instead, you can use \p{Blank} but you need to enable unicode character support as well which the regular split won't do. For example, this will work: Pattern.compile("\\p{Blank}", UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS).split(words) but it won't do the trim part.

The following demonstrates the problem and provides a solution. It is far from optimal to rely on regex for this, but now that Java has 8bit / 16bit byte representation, an efficient solution for this becomes quite long.

public class SplitStringTest { static final Pattern TRIM_UNICODE_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("^\\p{Blank}*(.*)\\p{Blank}$", UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS); static final Pattern SPLIT_SPACE_UNICODE_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("\\p{Blank}", UNICODE_CHARACTER_CLASS); public static String[] trimSplitUnicodeBySpace(String str) { Matcher trimMatcher = TRIM_UNICODE_PATTERN.matcher(str); boolean ignore = trimMatcher.matches(); // always true but must be called since it does the actual matching/grouping return SPLIT_SPACE_UNICODE_PATTERN.split(trimMatcher.group(1)); } @Test void test() { String words = " Hello I'm\u00A0your String\u00A0"; // non-breaking space here --^ and there -----^ String[] split = words.split(" "); String[] trimAndSplit = words.trim().split(" "); String[] splitUnicode = SPLIT_SPACE_UNICODE_PATTERN.split(words); String[] trimAndSplitUnicode = trimSplitUnicodeBySpace(words); System.out.println("words: [" + words + "]"); System.out.println("split: [" + Arrays.stream(split).collect(Collectors.joining("][")) + "]"); System.out.println("trimAndSplit: [" + Arrays.stream(trimAndSplit).collect(Collectors.joining("][")) + "]"); System.out.println("splitUnicode: [" + Arrays.stream(splitUnicode).collect(Collectors.joining("][")) + "]"); System.out.println("trimAndSplitUnicode: [" + Arrays.stream(trimAndSplitUnicode).collect(Collectors.joining("][")) + "]"); } } 

Results in:

words: [ Hello I'm your String ] split: [][Hello][I'm your][String ] trimAndSplit: [Hello][I'm your][String ] splitUnicode: [][Hello][I'm][your][String] trimAndSplitUnicode: [Hello][I'm][your][String] 

I do believe that putting a regular expression in the str.split parentheses should solve the issue. The Java String.split() method is based upon regular expressions so what you need is:

str = "Hello I'm your String"; String[] splitStr = str.split("\\s+"); 

Use Stringutils.split() to split the string by whites paces. For example StringUtils.split("Hello World") returns "Hello" and "World";

In order to solve the mentioned case we use split method like this

String split[]= StringUtils.split("Hello I'm your String"); 

when we print the split array the output will be :

Hello

I'm

your

String

For complete example demo check here

Try

String[] splited = str.split("\\s"); 

if somehow you don't wanna use String split method then you can use StringTokenizer class in Java as..

 StringTokenizer tokens = new StringTokenizer("Hello I'm your String", " "); String[] splited = new String[tokens.countTokens()]; int index = 0; while(tokens.hasMoreTokens()){ splited[index] = tokens.nextToken(); ++index; } 

Try this one

 String str = "This is String"; String[] splited = str.split("\\s+"); String split_one=splited[0]; String split_second=splited[1]; String split_three=splited[2]; Log.d("Splited String ", "Splited String" + split_one+split_second+split_three); 

OK, so we have to do splitting as you already got the answer I would generalize it.

If you want to split any string by spaces, delimiter(special chars).

First, remove the leading space as they create most of the issues.

str1 = " Hello I'm your String "; str2 = " Are you serious about this question_ boy, aren't you? "; 

First remove the leading space which can be space, tab etc.

String s = str1.replaceAll("^\\s+","");//starting with whitespace one or more 

Now if you want to split by space or any special char.

String[] sa = s.split("[^\\w]+");//split by any non word char 

But as w contains [a-zA-Z_0-9] ,so if you want to split by underscore(_) also use

 String[] sa = s.split("[!,? ._'@]+");//for str2 after removing leading space 

An alternative way would be:

import java.util.regex.Pattern; ... private static final Pattern SPACE = Pattern.compile(" "); String[] arr = SPACE.split(str); // str is the string to be split 

Saw it here

Very Simple Example below:

Hope it helps.

String str = "Hello I'm your String"; String[] splited = str.split(" "); var splited = str.split(" "); var splited1=splited[0]; //Hello var splited2=splited[1]; //I'm var splited3=splited[2]; //your var splited4=splited[3]; //String 

You can separate string using the below code:

 String theString="Hello world"; String[] parts = theString.split(" "); String first = parts[0];//"hello" String second = parts[1];//"World" 

Since it's been a while since these answers were posted, here's another more current way to do what's asked:

List<String> output = new ArrayList<>(); try (Scanner sc = new Scanner(inputString)) { while (sc.hasNext()) output.add(sc.next()); } 

Now you have a list of strings (which is arguably better than an array); if you do need an array, you can do output.toArray(new String[0]);

Not only white space, but my solution also solves the invisible characters as well.

str = "Hello I'm your String"; String[] splited = str.split("\p{Z}"); 

Here is a method to trim a String that has a "," or white space

private String shorterName(String s){ String[] sArr = s.split("\\,|\\s+"); String output = sArr[0]; return output; } 

Simple to Spit String by Space

 String CurrentString = "First Second Last"; String[] separated = CurrentString.split(" "); for (int i = 0; i < separated.length; i++) { if (i == 0) { Log.d("FName ** ", "" + separated[0].trim() + "\n "); } else if (i == 1) { Log.d("MName ** ", "" + separated[1].trim() + "\n "); } else if (i == 2) { Log.d("LName ** ", "" + separated[2].trim()); } } 

Join solutions in one!

public String getFirstNameFromFullName(String fullName){ int indexString = fullName.trim().lastIndexOf(' '); return (indexString != -1) ? fullName.trim().split("\\s+")[0].toUpperCase() : fullName.toUpperCase(); } 

Single quotes for char instead of double

String[] splited = str.split(' ');