Question

Java Experts ,

Please look into the below split command code and let me know why last two nulls are not captured.

String test = "1,O1,,,,0.0000,0.0000,,";
String[] splittest = test.split(",");
System.out.println("length -"+splittest.length);
for (String string : splittest) {
    System.out.println("value"+string);
}

The result iam getting

length -7
value1
valueO1
value
value
value
value0.0000
value0.0000

surprisingly the length is 7 where as it should be 9 and also as you can see values after 0.0000 ie two last nulls are not coming . Lets say now if i change the string test
“1,O1,,,,0.0000,0.0000,0,0”

String test = "1,O1,,,,0.0000,0.0000,0,0";
String[] splittest = test.split(",");
System.out.println("length -"+splittest.length);
for (String string : splittest) {
    System.out.println("value"+string);
}

I am getting correctly

length -9
value1
valueO1
value
value
value
value0.0000
value0.0000
value0
value0

I don’t think iam doing wrong . Is it a bug ? JAVA Version – jdk1.6.0_31

Answer 1

It behaves as specified in the javadoc:

This method works as if by invoking the two-argument split method with the given expression and a limit argument of zero. Trailing empty strings are therefore not included in the resulting array.

If you want to keep the trailing blank strings, you can use the 2 argument split method with a negative limit:

String[] splittest = test.split(",", -1);

If the limit is non-positive then the pattern will be applied as many times as possible and the array can have any length.