Java split on ^ (caret?) not working, is this a special character?

Question

In Java, I am trying to split on the ^ character, but it is failing to recognize it. Escaping \\^ throws code error.

Is this a special char

Answer 1

String.split() accepts a regex. The ^ sign is a special symbol denoting the beginning of the input sequence. You need to escape it to make it work. You were right trying to escape it with \ but it's a special character to escape things in Java strings so you need to escape the escape character with another \. It will give you:

\\^