Question

I have a Tab-delimited String (representing a table) that is passed to my method. When I print it to the command line, it appears like a table with rows:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/2fAyq.gif

The command window is correctly buffered. My thinking is that there is definitely a new line character before or after each row.

My problem is that I want to split up the incoming string into individual strings representing the rows of the table. So far I have:

private static final String newLine = System.getProperty("line.separator").toString();
private static final String tab = "\t";
private static String[] rows;
...

rows = tabDelimitedTable.split(newLine);    //problem is here
    
System.out.println();
System.out.println("################### start debug ####################");

System.out.println((tabDelimitedTable.contains(newLine)) ? "True" : "False");
    
System.out.println("#################### end debug###################");
System.out.println();

output:

################### start debug ####################
False
#################### end debug###################

Obviously there is something in the string telling the OS to start a new line. Yet it apparently contains no newline characters.

Running the latest JDK on Windows XP SP3.

Any Ideas?

Answer 1

Try

rows = tabDelimitedTable.split("[" + newLine + "]");

This should solve the regex problem.

Also not that important but return type of

System.getProperty("line.separator")

is String so no need to call toString().