How to Use Split

How do I split a string in Java?

Use the appropriately named method String#split().

String string = "004-034556";
String[] parts = string.split("-");
String part1 = parts[0]; // 004
String part2 = parts[1]; // 034556

Note that split's argument is assumed to be a regular expression, so remember to escape special characters if necessary.

there are 12 characters with special meanings: the backslash \, the caret ^, the dollar sign $, the period or dot ., the vertical bar or pipe symbol |, the question mark ?, the asterisk or star *, the plus sign +, the opening parenthesis (, the closing parenthesis ), and the opening square bracket [, the opening curly brace {, These special characters are often called "metacharacters".

For instance, to split on a period/dot . (which means "any character" in regex), use either backslash \ to escape the individual special character like so split("\\."), or use character class [] to represent literal character(s) like so split("[.]"), or use Pattern#quote() to escape the entire string like so split(Pattern.quote(".")).

String[] parts = string.split(Pattern.quote(".")); // Split on the exact string.

To test beforehand if the string contains certain character(s), just use String#contains().

if (string.contains("-")) {
    // Split it.
} else {
    throw new IllegalArgumentException("String " + string + " does not contain -");
}

Note, this does not take a regular expression. For that, use String#matches() instead.

If you'd like to retain the split character in the resulting parts, then make use of positive lookaround. In case you want to have the split character to end up in left hand side, use positive lookbehind by prefixing ?<= group on the pattern.

String string = "004-034556";
String[] parts = string.split("(?<=-)");
String part1 = parts[0]; // 004-
String part2 = parts[1]; // 034556

In case you want to have the split character to end up in right hand side, use positive lookahead by prefixing ?= group on the pattern.

String string = "004-034556";
String[] parts = string.split("(?=-)");
String part1 = parts[0]; // 004
String part2 = parts[1]; // -034556

If you'd like to limit the number of resulting parts, then you can supply the desired number as 2nd argument of split() method.

String string = "004-034556-42";
String[] parts = string.split("-", 2);
String part1 = parts[0]; // 004
String part2 = parts[1]; // 034556-42

Splitting on last delimiter in Python string?

Use .rsplit() or .rpartition() instead:

s.rsplit(',', 1)
s.rpartition(',')

str.rsplit() lets you specify how many times to split, while str.rpartition() only splits once but always returns a fixed number of elements (prefix, delimiter & postfix) and is faster for the single split case.

Demo:

>>> s = "a,b,c,d"
>>> s.rsplit(',', 1)
['a,b,c', 'd']
>>> s.rsplit(',', 2)
['a,b', 'c', 'd']
>>> s.rpartition(',')
('a,b,c', ',', 'd')

Both methods start splitting from the right-hand-side of the string; by giving str.rsplit() a maximum as the second argument, you get to split just the right-hand-most occurrences.

If you only need the last element, but there is a chance that the delimiter is not present in the input string or is the very last character in the input, use the following expressions:

# last element, or the original if no `,` is present or is the last character
s.rsplit(',', 1)[-1] or s
s.rpartition(',')[-1] or s

If you need the delimiter gone even when it is the last character, I'd use:

def last(string, delimiter):
    """Return the last element from string, after the delimiter

    If string ends in the delimiter or the delimiter is absent,
    returns the original string without the delimiter.

    """
    prefix, delim, last = string.rpartition(delimiter)
    return last if (delim and last) else prefix

This uses the fact that string.rpartition() returns the delimiter as the second argument only if it was present, and an empty string otherwise.

How to use the split function on every row in a dataframe in Python?

You're trying to split the entire review column of the data frame (which is the Series mentioned in the error message). What you want to do is apply a function to each row of the data frame, which you can do by calling apply on the data frame:

f = lambda x: len(x["review"].split("disappointed")) -1
reviews["disappointed"] = reviews.apply(f, axis=1)

Split string with multiple delimiters in Python

Luckily, Python has this built-in :)

import re
re.split('; |, ', string_to_split)

Update:
Following your comment:

>>> a='Beautiful, is; better*than\nugly'
>>> import re
>>> re.split('; |, |\*|\n',a)
['Beautiful', 'is', 'better', 'than', 'ugly']

Split string at delimiter '\' in python

You need to escape the backslash:

 S.split('\\')

You may also need to string_escape:

In [10]: s = 'greenland.gdb\topology_check\t_buildings'

In [11]: s.split("\\")
Out[11]: ['greenland.gdb\topology_check\t_buildings']

In [12]: s.encode("string_escape").split("\\")
Out[12]: ['greenland.gdb', 'topology_check', 't_buildings']

\t would be interpreted as a tab character unless you were using a raw string:

In [18]: s = 'greenland.gdb\topology_check\t_buildings'

In [19]: print(s)
greenland.gdb   opology_check   _buildings

In [20]: s = r'greenland.gdb\topology_check\t_buildings'

In [21]: print(s)
greenland.gdb\topology_check\t_buildings

Escape characters

Split Strings into words with multiple word boundary delimiters

A case where regular expressions are justified:

import re
DATA = "Hey, you - what are you doing here!?"
print re.findall(r"[\w']+", DATA)
# Prints ['Hey', 'you', 'what', 'are', 'you', 'doing', 'here']

Splitting strings in Python without split()

sentence = 'This is a sentence'
split_value = []
tmp = ''
for c in sentence:
    if c == ' ':
        split_value.append(tmp)
        tmp = ''
    else:
        tmp += c
if tmp:
    split_value.append(tmp)

Split string using a newline delimiter with Python

str.splitlines method should give you exactly that.

>>> data = """a,b,c
... d,e,f
... g,h,i
... j,k,l"""
>>> data.splitlines()
['a,b,c', 'd,e,f', 'g,h,i', 'j,k,l']

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