Converting a String with Breaks to an Arraylist

Question

If I have the following string:

String string = "My \n name \n is \n John \n Doe";

And I want to separate each word and add it to an arraylist:

ArrayList<String> sentence = new ArrayList<String>();

How would I do that?

Bare in mind that the line break may not be \\n - it could be anything.

Thanks

Answer 1

String lines[] = String.split("\\n");

for(String line: lines) {
    sentence.add(line);
}

This should do it.

Answer 2

List<String> list = Arrays.asList(string.split("\\s+"));

• you are splitting on "any number of whitepsace symbols", which includes space, new line, etc
• the returned list is readonly. If you need a new, writable list, use the copy-constructor
  new ArrayList(list)

Answer 3

You can use String.split("\\\\s*\\n\\\\s*") to get a String[] , and then use Arrays.asList() . It will get a List<String> , if you want an ArrayList you can use the constructor ArrayList(Collection)

String string = "My \n name \n is \n John \n Doe";
String[] arr = string.split("\\s*\n\\s*");
List<String> list = Arrays.asList(arr);

You can also use Character.LINE_SEPARATOR instead of \\n .

Answer 4

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

public class Test
{
    public static void main( String[] args )
    {
        List < String > arrayList = Arrays.asList( "My \n name \n is \n John \n Doe".split( "\\n" ) );
        // Removes the 2 white spaces: .split( " \\n " )
    }
}