How do I use regex to split a string into characters?

Question

I need to learn RegEx but don't have time to figure this out right now. -- So I'm attempting exploit the community's capabilities.

I have a string containing a list of acceptable 1-character comment variables.

String comments = "#;";

And I want:

String[] parsedComments = {"#", ";"};

What RegEx string will solve my problems?

String[] parsedComments = comments.split(/*  "???"  */);

Answer 1

Just access the string index using comments[0], comments[1] ... comments[n]

Answer 2

I misunderstood you in my original answer. You don't want Regex. Regex is used to find patterns, and you just want to split. You could use an empty string, but that will return an empty string as well as the characters.

Just access through the index.

Answer 3

This should do it, among other weird hacks:

String[] parsedComments = comments.split("(?!^)");

It's hardly a job for regex, though. May as well just iterate across the string and build an array out of each 1-character substring.

Answer 4

First, why do you need to break them into an array? A String has almost the exact same methods available to getting chars at indexes and virtually the same performance.

But, to answer your question:

string.split("");

This will give you an extra empty string at the first pos of the resulting array.

Answer 5

Why do you want to use a regex? Try String.toCharArray() for example.

Answer 6

I tried to add this as a comment to "Daniel" and "Lazarus", but I don't have enough reputation points yet... unless I am misunderstanding you, you are saying to access the original string using the index. You cannot do that in Java.

String foo = "abcde";
String bee = foo[1]; // not valid

If I have misunderstood you, I apologize. If not, I wanted to clarify that for posterity. :-)