Question

Why does the following code return the output below?
I would expect that 2 and 3 provide the same string splitting of 1.

    Log.d(TAG, " 1 ---------------------------");
String originalText = "hello. .hello1";

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[a-zA-Z]+|\\s|\\W|\\d");
Matcher m = p.matcher(originalText);

 while (m.find()) { 
     Log.d(TAG, m.group(0)); 
 }
 Log.d(TAG, "2 --------------------------- " + originalText);

String [] scrollString = p.split(originalText);

int i;      
for (i=0; i<scrollString.length; i++)
    Log.d(TAG, scrollString[i]);

Log.d(TAG, "3 --------------------------- " + originalText);

scrollString = originalText.split("[a-zA-Z]+|\\s|\\W|\\d");


for (i=0; i<scrollString.length; i++)
    Log.d(TAG, scrollString[i]);

OUTPUT:

1 ---------------------------

hello

.

.

hello

1

2 ---------------------------

3 --------------------------- 

Answer 1

No. 1 will find the pattern and return that, whereas No. 2 and 3 will return the text in between the found pattern (which serves as the delimiter in those cases).