String split question using "*"

Question

Let's say have a string...

String myString =  "my*big*string*needs*parsing";

All I want is to get an split the string into "my" , "big" , "string", etc. So I try

myString.split("*");

returns java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Dangling meta character '*' near index 0

* is a special character in regex so I try escaping....

myString.split("\\*");

same exception. I figured someone would know a quick solution. Thanks.

Answer 1

split("\\*") works with me.

Answer 2

One escape \ will not do the trick in Java 6 on Mac OSX, as \ is reserved for \b \t \n \f \r \'\" and \\. What you have seems to work for me:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String myString =  "my*big*string*needs*parsing";
    String[] a = myString.split("\\*");
    for (String b : a) {
        System.out.println(b);
    }
}

outputs:

my
big
string
needs
parsing

Answer 3

http://arunma.com/2007/08/23/javautilregexpatternsyntaxexception-dangling-meta-character-near-index-0/

Should do exactly what you need.

Answer 4

This happens because the split method takes a regular expression, not a plain string.

The '*' character means match the previous character zero or more times, thus it is not valid to specify it on its own.

So it should be escaped, like following

split("\\*")

Answer 5

myString.split("\\*"); is working fine on Java 5. Which JRE do you use.

Answer 6

You can also use a StringTokenizer.

 StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer("my*big*string*needs*parsing", "\*");
 while (st.hasMoreTokens()) {
     System.out.println(st.nextToken());
 }