why the output is different from usual String.split()

[charan sri]

import java.lang.*;
class StringSplit
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
String str="sss|sss|ssssss|sssds|sssss";
String[] a= str.split("/|");
for(int i=0;i<a.length;i++)
{
System.out.println(i+"-->"+a[i]);
}
}
}
Can any one explain me why the above code is behaving differently?
If i give ',' in place of '|' the output is correct.
I dont undersatand why?

Thanks
Charan.

[charan sri]

Administrators or moderators plz delete my previous topic.

Thanks,
Charan.

[Todd Johnson]

I'm not completely up to speed on regular expressions, but I believe the pipe (|) has the special meaning "OR" in a regular expression. So the following code...

String[] a = str.split("|");

Really doesn't make sense (it matches everything I'm guessing). So if we want to look for the literal character pipe (|) we need to escape it out like this...

String[] a = str.split("\\|");

This will give you the behaviour you are looking for.

[Akshay Kiran]

exactly, you need to escape it twice because '|' is a Metacharacter while ',' is not and doesn't need to be escaped.
Also note however this intricacy

String s= "\\|";

does the same work as
String s= arg[0]
and arg[0]= "\|" at the command line or from a file.

[charan sri]

Thanks akshay and Johnson

Thanks,
Charan.