How to Correctly Split a Java String Using the Pipe Symbol as a Delimiter?

Splitting a Java String by the Pipe Symbol using split(""|")

Splitting a Java String using the split() method is a common technique to break the string into smaller substrings based on a specified delimiter. However, when using the pipe symbol ("|") as the delimiter, it can lead to unexpected results.

As per the official Java documentation, the pipe symbol ("|") in a regular expression (Regex) is treated as the OR operator. This means that test.split("|") effectively splits the string based on either "A" or "|". This results in the unexpected output where empty strings ("<") are also included in the split results.

To prevent this behavior, it is necessary to escape the pipe symbol using a backslash (). The backslash acts as an escape character in regular expressions and allows you to treat the pipe symbol as a literal character rather than an operator. The correct way to split the string by the pipe symbol is:

String[] result = test.split("\|");

By escaping the pipe symbol, the regex "|" matches only the pipe symbol itself, and the string is split into the desired substrings:

>A<
>B<
>C<
>D<</p>
<p>Alternatively, you can also use the Pattern.quote() method to create an escaped version of the pipe symbol:</p>
<pre class="brush:php;toolbar:false">String[] result = test.split(Pattern.quote("|"));

This method returns a string with all occurrences of metacharacters in the input string escaped, preserving the literal meaning of the characters. By using Pattern.quote("|) in the split() method, you achieve the same result as escaping the pipe symbol manually.

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