What should ,7-6-5-4-3-2-1,.split(‘,’) return? It seems to return blank string 7-6-5-4-3-2-1 ie. two strings.

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Editorial Team

Asked: May 18, 20262026-05-18T09:13:35+00:00 2026-05-18T09:13:35+00:00

What should ",7-6-5-4-3-2-1,".split(',') return?

It seems to return

  blank string
  7-6-5-4-3-2-1

ie. two strings. I’d expect either one or three strings – that is a blank string at both ends or just the string between ‘,’s.

Am I wrong? Is there a good explanation for the current behaviour?

EDIT:

OK. So yes, I had the wrong expectation and no, there is no good explanation other than Java works that way :). Thanks.

EDIT2:

You can get the desired behaviour with split(",", -1)
(Scala 2.8.1)

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Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-05-18T09:13:35+00:00

Editorial Team

This is how it works. See here, which explains Java’s regex version of it, but it’s the same thing in the end:

Trailing empty strings are therefore not included in the resulting array.

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