regex for tab doesnt work | java

Question

I'm trying to do regex for splitting string when tab is spotted.

I used this :

String line = scan.nextLine(); String Splitted[] = line.split("\\t");

but it doesn't work so currently I'm using (which is working for me) :

String line = scan.nextLine(); String Splitted[] = line.split("\\\\s\\\\s\\\\s\\\\s");

Do you guys have idea why I can't use the "\\t" regex?

Answer 1

Yes, \\t is a valid Regex, but in Java string literals, a backslash has a special meaning, so to get the Regex symbol \\t you'll have to use \\\\t . But since you are processing user input, you never know what this "tab" really consists of (could be a tab symbol or 4 spaces). So maybe you should just split at (\\\\t|\\\\s{2,}) - beware, this is a Java string literal. Hence the double backslash.

EDIT: In my above answer i suspect you don't want to split at single whitespaces too, is that right? In case you do want to split at single whitespaces , you could really just use \\\\s+ instead.