String.split is not working

Question

I am trying to split a string of words and each word is separated by a " . " I don't know what i'm doing wrong:

@Override
        protected void onPostExecute(String result) {
            result = "order . war harmony . concord";
            result = result.replace("(noun)", "");
            result = result.replace("(antonym)", "");
            result = result.replace(":", "");
            result = result.replace("|", " . ");
            String[] separated = result.split(".");

            tv.setText(result + ": " + separated.length);
            super.onPostExecute(result);
        }

Yet separated.length is always 0!

Answer 1

The period (.) needs to be escaped, because String#split uses a regex. In regex an unescaped period means any character:

String[] separated = result.split("\\.");

Answer 2

Split method in java takes regex parameter, so be careful that in regex the character "." means any character, so you need to deal with it as a special character.

Hence your code might be as the following:

@Override
protected void onPostExecute(String result) {
    result = "order . war harmony . concord";
    result = result.replace("(noun)", "");
    result = result.replace("(antonym)", "");
    result = result.replace(":", "");
    result = result.replace("|", " . ");
    // changed the splitting character "." to be regex "\\."
    String[] separated = result.split("\\.");
    tv.setText(result + ": " + separated.length);
    super.onPostExecute(result);
}