How Can I Correctly Split a Java String Using the Pipe Symbol as a Delimiter?

Escaping Metacharacters to Split Java Strings by Pipe Symbol

The Java split method provides a convenient way to partition a string into smaller segments based on a delimiter. However, when the delimiter itself is a metacharacter in regular expressions, like the pipe symbol (|), special handling is required.

As demonstrated in the provided example code, splitting the string "A|B|C||D" using simple test.split("|") yields unexpected results. This is because the pipe symbol in regex represents the OR operator. To prevent this interpretation, we need to escape the metacharacter using a backslash ('').

The correct code to split the string by the pipe symbol would be:

test.split("\|");

The backslash in this context indicates that the following character is not meant to be interpreted as a regex metacharacter but as a literal pipe symbol. This allows the split method to correctly partition the string as follows:

>A<
>B<
>C<
><
>D<

Alternatively, we can use the Pattern.quote method to escape the pipe symbol:

test.split(Pattern.quote("|"));

Pattern.quote generates a version of the regular expression where metacharacters like the pipe symbol are properly quoted and interpreted as literals.

By employing these techniques, we can effectively split Java strings using metacharacters like the pipe symbol, ensuring accurate partitioning of the input string.

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