CODEWITHSUNDEEP
java
Harshavardhan Konakanchi
Harshavardhan Konakanchi

Reputation: 4294

How to give escape sequences for user defined Inputs

I had an application in which my user input is to give the desired length of String elements separated by
:(colon)

My code to parse it is like this 

String str[] = input.split(":");

But I am getting erroneous results when the user strings have : in between them.

I tried to use the string using \:, but it never worked.

The sample user string may be like this 1:2:3

The expected value here is 

str[0] = "1";
str[1] = "2";
str[2] = "3";

and is the same as actual

But if the String is like this 1:Title 1  : 2: Title 2 :   3: Title 3

The expected value here is 

str[0] = "1: Title 1";
str[1] = "2: Title 2";
str[2] = "3: Title 3";

and is the not same as actual,

str[0] = "1";
str[1] = "Title 1";
str[2] = "2";
str[3] = "Title 2";
str[4] = "3";
str[5] = "Title 3";

How can I overcome this ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 140

Answers (3)

Wenhao Ji
Wenhao Ji

Reputation: 5151

The method String.split() doesn't deal with the escaping automatically, and you should define it explicitly by yourself using regular expression. This question may help you.

Here is the snippet,

String input = "1\\:Title 1:2\\:Title 2:3\\:Title 3";
String[] strs = input.split("(?<!\\\\):");
for (String str : strs) {
    System.out.println(str.replace("\\:", ":"));
}

Upvotes: 0

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 785561

Following should work for you:

String str = "1:Title 1  : 2: Title 2 :   3: Title 3";
String[] arr = str.split("\\s*:(?=\\s*\\d)\\s*");
System.out.printf("Split: %s%n", Arrays.toString(arr));

OUTPUT:

Split: [1:Title 1, 2: Title 2, 3: Title 3]

Live Demo: http://ideone.com/8yeGns

Upvotes: 0

Joop Eggen
Joop Eggen

Reputation: 109597

Use spaces around the splitting colon: split(" : "). This assumes that an ordinary colon in text will ordinarily not have a space in front.

Not much of an answer, but otherwise you'll need to specify some representation of a non-splitting colon, and handle it. For instance replace("\\:", "§") and after splitting replace("§", ":").

Upvotes: 2

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