What is the best way to extract the first word from a string in Java?

Question

Trying to write a short method so that I can parse a string and extract the first word. I have been looking for the best way to do this.

I assume I would use s

Answer 1

You can use String.split with a limit of 2.

    String s = "Hello World, I'm the rest.";
    String[] result = s.split(" ", 2);
    String first = result[0];
    String rest = result[1];
    System.out.println("First: " + first);
    System.out.println("Rest: " + rest);

    // prints =>
    // First: Hello
    // Rest: World, I'm the rest.

• API docs for: split

Answer 2

The simple one I used to do is

str.contains(" ") ? str.split(" ")[0] : str

Where str is your string or text bla bla :). So, if

1. str is having empty value it returns as it is.
2. str is having one word, it returns as it is.
3. str is multiple words, it extract the first word and return.

Hope this is helpful.

Answer 3

You should be doing this

String input = "hello world, this is a line of text";

int i = input.indexOf(' ');
String word = input.substring(0, i);
String rest = input.substring(i);

The above is the fastest way of doing this task.

Answer 4

import org.apache.commons.lang3.StringUtils;

...
StringUtils.substringBefore("Grigory Kislin", " ")

Answer 5

To simplify the above:

text.substring(0, text.indexOf(' ')); 

Here is a ready function:

private String getFirstWord(String text) {

  int index = text.indexOf(' ');

  if (index > -1) { // Check if there is more than one word.

    return text.substring(0, index).trim(); // Extract first word.

  } else {

    return text; // Text is the first word itself.
  }
}

Answer 6

like this:

final String str = "This is a long sentence";
final String[] arr = str.split(" ", 2);
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(arr));

arr[0] is the first word, arr[1] is the rest