Split string and trim every element

Question

Is there any library API or regex pattern to split a String on some delimiter and automatically trim leading and trailing spaces from every element without having to loop the el

Answer 1

Just trim it before you split

" A B # C#D# E # ".trim().split("\\s*#\\s*")

The spaces after the commas in [ A B, C, D, E] are just the way Arrays.toString prints

Answer 2

Guava to the rescue! Use CharMatcher and Splitter. I use Joiner just to stitch the Iterable back together, clearly showing that the iterable only has the letters in it, with no padding, extraneous spaces, or hash signs.

package main;

import com.google.common.base.CharMatcher;
import com.google.common.base.Joiner;
import com.google.common.base.Splitter;

public class TestMain {

    static Splitter split = Splitter.on(CharMatcher.anyOf(" #")).trimResults()
            .omitEmptyStrings();
    static Joiner join = Joiner.on(", ");

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final String test = " A B # C#D# E # ";
        System.out.println(join.join(split.split(test)));
    }
}

Output:

A, B, C, D, E

Great for people who get headaches from regex.

Answer 3

What about just doing a replaceall before splitting?

str.replaceall("\\s*#\\s*","#").split()

Answer 4

Edited to correct whitespace error that was pointed out by Marcus.

I think that the proper regex should be [\s]*#[\s]*:

str.split("[\\s]*#[\\s]*");

Tested on : http://regexpal.com/

Answer 5

Without regex it should look like this:

"  A   B #  C#D# E  #  "
    .split('#')
    .map(function(item) { return item.trim(); } )
    .filter(function(n){ return n != "" });

outputs: ["A B", "C", "D", "E"]