Question

The following code:

val sentence = "1 2  3   4".split(" ")

gives me:

Array(1, 2, "", 3, "", "", 4)

but I’d rather want to have only the words:

Array(1, 2, 3, 4)

How can I split the sentence when the words are separated by multiple spaces?

Answer 1

Use a regular expression:

scala> "1   2 3".split(" +")
res1: Array[String] = Array(1, 2, 3)

The “+” means “one or more of the previous” (previous being a space).

Better yet, if you want to split on all whitespace:

scala> "1   2 3".split("\\s+")
res2: Array[String] = Array(1, 2, 3)

(Where "\\s" is a Pattern which matches any whitespace. Look here for more examples.)