StringTokenizer cannot split String with tabs?

[Mingwei Jiang]

I read one line from the file that is separated by tab, and no matter I use "\t" or " " (tab in double quotes), it doesn't work. It can only give me one token instead of 12 which is correct.

Can anyone help me?

  StringTokenizer tokens = new StringTokenizer(line, "\t");  

Thanks

[Sameer Damle]

just try this

StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer("your string containg tabs");

this should work.... and by the way just go through javadoc for StringTokenizer class you will get much more information.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Is there a reason why people skip over String.split() in favor of the deprecated StringTokenizer? split() is much easier and seems to be very fast.

[Mike Noel]

From the API docs:

StringTokenizer is a legacy class that is retained for compatibility reasons although its use is discouraged in new code. It is recommended that anyone seeking this functionality use the split method of String or the java.util.regex package instead.

I second the suggestion to use String.split();

_M_

[Layne Lund]

Originally posted by Mingwei Jiang:
I read one line from the file that is separated by tab, and no matter I use "\t" or " " (tab in double quotes), it doesn't work. It can only give me one token instead of 12 which is correct.

Can anyone help me?

  StringTokenizer tokens = new StringTokenizer(line, "\t");  

Thanks

I don't see anything wrong with this code. Are you sure that line has tab characters in it? Also, are there any characters in between the tab characters. If for example, you have something like
[code]
String line = "\t\tsomething"
[code]
Then StringTokenizer will only return a single token. By default it will not return the "null token" between the two tab characters. I believe there is a method to force it to do so, however.

With that said, I agree that you should use String.split() or regular experessions instead, if you are using a version of Java that supports these.

Layne

[Mingwei Jiang]

Thank you, guys. I found the String.split API, and it's quite cool. It can accept regular expression.

[Gerardo Tasistro]

On the lines of split. Is there an opposite? Like join? In php there is explode and implode. Of course you can do the implode in Java through a loop, but is there something like String.join(String [], delimiter)?? Yes I did check the String API. There is no String.join per see, but maybe someone knows a particular API that does include this.

[Layne Lund]

I don't know of this anywhere in the API, but that doesn't mean much. You should be able to write a method that does this using StringBuilder fairly easily.

Layne

[Jeff Albertson]

I don't know of a "join", but for something quick and dirty I write

    String s = java.util.Arrays.toString(array);//This is 1.5!

The string is formatted: "[like, this, with, commas, and, square, backets]"