Question

I’m trying to split some user input. The input is of the form a1 b2 c3 d4.
For each input (eg; a1), how do I split it into ‘a’ and ‘1’?

I’m familiar with the string split function, but what do I specify as the delimiter or is this even possible?

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you want to split the string generically (rather than trying to count characters per the other answers), you can still use String.split(), but you have to utilize regular expressions. (Note: This answer will work when you have strings like a1, a2, aaa333, etc.)

String ALPHA = "\p{Alpha}";
String NUMERIC = "\d";

String test1 = "a1";
String test2 = "aa22";

ArrayList<String> alpha = new ArrayList();
ArrayList<String> numeric = new ArrayList();

alpha.add(test1.split(ALPHA));
numeric.add(test1.split(NUMERIC));
alpha.add(test2.split(ALPHA));
numeric.add(test2.split(NUMERIC));

At this point, the alpha array will have the alpha parts of your strings and the numeric array will have the numeric parts. (Note: I didn’t actually compile this to test that it would work, but it should give you the basic idea.)