Scanner vs. StringTokenizer vs. String.Split

Question

I just learned about Java\'s Scanner class and now I\'m wondering how it compares/competes with the StringTokenizer and String.Split. I know that the StringTokenizer and Str

Answer 1

One important difference is that both String.split() and Scanner can produce empty strings but StringTokenizer never does it.

For example:

String str = "ab cd  ef";

StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(str, " ");
for (int i = 0; st.hasMoreTokens(); i++) System.out.println("#" + i + ": " + st.nextToken());

String[] split = str.split(" ");
for (int i = 0; i < split.length; i++) System.out.println("#" + i + ": " + split[i]);

Scanner sc = new Scanner(str).useDelimiter(" ");
for (int i = 0; sc.hasNext(); i++) System.out.println("#" + i + ": " + sc.next());

Output:

//StringTokenizer
#0: ab
#1: cd
#2: ef
//String.split()
#0: ab
#1: cd
#2: 
#3: ef
//Scanner
#0: ab
#1: cd
#2: 
#3: ef

This is because the delimiter for String.split() and Scanner.useDelimiter() is not just a string, but a regular expression. We can replace the delimiter " " with " +" in the example above to make them behave like StringTokenizer.