How to split string which has different values with multiple delimiters?

Question

Could someone give me suggestions for a regex for the below?

Example: city^chennai|country^India~TamilNadu|pincode^600034

Expected delimited String are:

city
chennai
country
India,TamilNadu
pincode
600034

Note: ~ should be converted into ,

Answer 1

Just split on non-word chars (excluding comma) after replacing the ~ with a comma:

input.replaceAll("~",",").split("[^\\w,]");

then (as per comment requiring a map) iterate over the resulting array in pairs, adding the map entries.

Here's some test code:

public static void main( String[] args ) {
    String input = "city^chennai|country^India~TamilNadu|pincode^600034";
    String[] things = input.replaceAll( "~", "," ).split( "[^\\w,]" );
    Map<String, String> map = new HashMap<String, String>( );
    for (int i = 0; i < things.length; i+=2) {
        map.put(things[i], things[i+1]);
    }
    System.out.println( map );
}

Output:

{pincode=600034, country=India,TamilNadu, city=chennai}

Answer 2

((w+)[|^~])*(w+)

Edit: Now I noticed that it's map-like, so perhaps:

((w+)^(w+)|)*(w+)^(w+)

Replace w+ with custom class in [...] to get ~ also working.

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("((w+)^(w+)|)*(w+)^(w+)");
 Matcher m = p.matcher("city^chennai|country^India~TamilNadu|pincode^600034");
 if( m.matches() ){
     for( int i = 1; i < m.groupCount(); i+=2 ) {
         // m.group(i) and m.group(i+1) gives you the values.
     }
 }

If you want the easier way, use Pattern#split("")

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html#split%28java.lang.CharSequence%29

Answer 3

You can just use this:

.replaceAll("~", ",").split("[|^]")

Assume the String is split up properly, you can group them into name-value pair by mapping the String at index 2k to index (2k + 1)

Answer 4

you can use StringTokenizer class here to split a string with different delimiters. Use hasNextToken("delimiterHereAsString") method to specify different delimiters with which you want to split.

this link might help you. http://www.java-examples.com/java-stringtokenizer---specify-delimiter-example