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 simple solution is to use trim() to remove leading (and trailing) whitespace before the split(...) call.

You can't do this with just split(...). The split regex is matching string separators; i.e. there will necessarily be a substring (possibly empty) before and after each matched separator.

You can deal with the case where the whitespace is at the end by using split(..., 0). This discards any trailing empty strings. However, there is no equivalent form of split for discarding leading empty strings.