Problem with extracting piece of String...

[dupowdis]

Thanks for the help in advance. So basically I have some Strings (lets call these Strings "Numbers") that looks like this.

Numbers1 = "   3.74343E-01   4.82245E-01   1.95635E-01  -1.05565E-01   3.81702E-02"
Numbers2 = "   2.23965E-01   1.29925E-01   4.08791E-02  -4.21790E-02  -1.21410E-01"
Numbers3 = "  -2.73593E-01   8.63407E-02  -1.37682E-01  -3.01382E-01  -1.51439E-01"

My program is supposed to take this string, split each piece into an individual String, and put each one in an array. So basically I need my outputted array to look like this:

StoredStrings1[] = ["3.74343E-01", "4.82245E-01", "1.95635E-01", "-1.05565E-01", "3.81702E-02"]
StoredStrings2[] = ["2.23965E-01", "1.29925E-01", "4.08791E-02", "-4.21790E-02", "-1.21410E-01"]
StoredStrings3[] = ["-2.73593E-01", "8.63407E-02", "-1.37682E-01", "-3.01382E-01", "-1.51439E-01"]

Now, what I would usually do is something like this:

StoredStrings1 = Numbers1.split("   ");
StoredStrings2 = Numbers2.split("   ");
StoredStrings3 = Numbers3.split("   ");

This way, the "Numbers" would be split based on the three spaces between each number. However, there's a slight problem. Because some of the numbers have a negative sign, the spaces in these cases are only 2 between. So basically, there's spots with 2 spaces and spots with 3 spaces between, and I do not know how I could make sure my program splits all the strings accordingly, because the split method does not work. Any help with splitting the strings all the same would be deeply appreciated.

[NormR1]

the split method does not work

Can you show what happened and explain why it was wrong?

The split() method takes a reg expression. Try making one to skip 1 to n spaces.

[jon.kiparsky]

You want to split on any amount of whitespace? Try
StoredStrings1 = Numbers1.split("\\s+");

\s matches [ \t\n\x0B\f\r], so it should suit your purposes.
Or if you want to be more specific, you can match on just one or more spaces:
StoredStrings1 = Numbers1.split(" +")

You're going to want to read up on regular expressions at some stage if you want to get much more complicated than just using the canned classes. That can get a little tricky, but it's worth knowing.

[dupowdis]

You want to split on any amount of whitespace? Try
StoredStrings1 = Numbers1.split("\\s+");

\s matches [ \t\n\x0B\f\r], so it should suit your purposes.
Or if you want to be more specific, you can match on just one or more spaces:
StoredStrings1 = Numbers1.split(" +")

You're going to want to read up on regular expressions at some stage if you want to get much more complicated than just using the canned classes. That can get a little tricky, but it's worth knowing.

Ah, I see. so I just split with " +" as the parameters. That is very good to know! I will read up on expressions one of these days, because they really seem to come in handy for some of the things I need to do. thanks for your response! I will try this right now.

[jon.kiparsky]

Just to clarify, that's "[space]+" - not "+"!

[NormR1]

The poor old StringTokenizer might work:

StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(Numbers1, " ");
   splitNumbers = new String[st.countTokens()];
   for(int i=0; i < splitNumbers.length; i++)  {
     splitNumbers[i] = st.nextToken();
   }
   System.out.println("split=" + Arrays.toString(splitNumbers));

split=[3.74343E-01, 4.82245E-01, 1.95635E-01, -1.05565E-01, 3.81702E-02]