How to split a string with whitespace chars at the beginning?

Question

Quick example:

public class Test {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String str = \"   a b\";
        String[] arr = str.split(\"\\\\s+\")         


        

Answer 1

The other way to trim it is to use look ahead and look behind to be sure that the whitespace is sandwiched between two non-white-space characters,... something like:

String[] arr = str.split("(?<=\\S)\\s+(?=\\S)");

The problem with this is that it doesn't trim the leading spaces, giving this result:

   a
b

but nor should it as String#split(...) is for splitting, not trimming.