Splitting a string at a particular position in java

Question

Assume you have a string of the form "word1 word2 word3 word4" . What is the simplest way to split it such that split[0] = "word1 word2" and split[1] = "word3 word4" ?

EDIT: Clarifying

I want to split such that instead of having split[0] = "word1", I have the first 2 words (I agree it was not clear) and all the other words in split[1], ie on the second space

Answer 1

I would use the String.substring(beginIndex, endIndex); and String.substring(beginIndex);

String a = "word1 word2 word3 word4";
int first = a.indexOf(" ");
int second = a.indexOf(" ", first + 1);
String b = a.substring(0,second);
String c = b.subString(second); // Only startindex, cuts at the end of the string

This would result in a = "word1 word2" and b = "word3 word4"

Answer 2

Do you want to do this in pairs always? This is a dynamic solution provided by the SO community wiki, Extracting pairs of words using String.split()

String input = "word1 word2 word3 word4";
String[] pairs = input.split("(?<!\\G\\w+)\\s");
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(pairs));

output:

[word1 word2, word3 word4]

Answer 3

String str = "word1 word2 word3 word4";
String subStr1 = str.substring(0,12);
String subStr2 = str.substring(12);

Would be your best bet for splitting at a position. If you need to split on the second occurrence of space, a for loop might be a better option.

int count = 0;
int splitIndex;

for (int i = 0; i < str.length(); i++){
    if(str.charAt(i) == " "){
        count++;
    }
    if (count == 2){
        splitIndex = i;
    }
}

and then you would split it into substrings as above.

Answer 4

This should do what you want to achieve.

You can use String.split(" "); to split on spaces in the initial string.

Then from there you said you wanted the first two words in split[0] so i just handled that with a simple conditional if(i==0 || i == 1) add it to split[0]

String word = "word1 word2 word3 word4";
String[] split = new String[2];
//Split the initial string on spaces which will give you an array of the words.
String[] wordSplit = word.split(" ");
//Foreach item wordSplit add it to either Split[0] or Split[1]
for (int i = 0; i < wordSplit.length(); i++) {
    //Determine which position to add the string to
    if (i == 0 || i == 1) split[0] += wordSplit[i] + " ";
    else {
        split[1] += wordSplit[i] + " ";
    }
}

Answer 5

If you would want to split a string into sets of two words, this code could help:

String toBeSplit = "word1 word2 word3 word4";
String firstSplit = a.substr(0,tBS.indexOf(" ", tBS.indexOf(" ")));
String secondSplit = firstSplit.substr(tBS.indexOf(" ", tBS.indexOf(" ")));

Answer 6

Split the string by its common delimiter (spaces in this case) and conditionally re-add the delimiter of choice in output, iterating by 2

string original = "word1 word2 word3 word4";
string[] delimitedSplit = original.split(" ");
for (int i = 0; i< delimitedSplit.length; i+=2) {
    if (i < delimitedSplit.length - 1 ) { //handle uneven pairs
        out.println(delimitedSplit[i] + " " + delimitedSplit[i+1] ); 
    }
    else {
        out.println(delimitedSplit[i]
    }