Question

Can anyone advise on an issue that’s been bugging me? I have a Java .jar file which returns a string from a method made up as follows:

integer integer integer block_of_text

That is three integers which may be positive or negative, each separated by single spaces, and then another space before a block of text which may consist of any characters but which should not contain carriage returns. Now I suppose I can read a substring up to the space character for each of the initial integers and then simply read the remaining text in one go.

I should add that the block of text is not to be broken down regardless of what it contains.

But can anyone suggest a better alternative?

Thanks to the respondents. This has saved me a headache!

Answer 1

You can use the form of String#split(regex,limit) which takes a limit:

String s = "123 456 789 The rest of the string";
String ss[] = s.split(" ", 4);
// ss = {"123", "456", "789", "The rest of the string"};