Another method to break a string ???

[Roy Sin]

hi,
does anyone know how to do this.. i need to break up a string with "|" as the delimiter..
the data is as follows :
1|2|3|||6||||
i am unable to extract the numberr 6 out.. pls help.. my code is as follows :
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(inputFile);
line = br.readLine();
StringTokenizer in = new StringTokenizer(line,"|",true);
while (in.hasMoreTokens())
{
lineRead = in.nextToken();
if (c==6)
{
System.out.println("U got the number 6");
}
c++;
}

[Roy Sin]

sorri.. for the StringTokenizer,
it should be
StringTokenizer in = new StringTokenizer (line,"|")...
it is bcos i want to get the column data.. it is supposed to allow users to add or delete data between the delimiter...

[Dirk Schreckmann]

If c is an int that starts with the value of 0 before the while-loop, and you have less than 6 tokens in "in", then c will never be 6. Moreover, if you have only 6 tokens in "in", then c will equal 6 after the last iteration of the loop, and still nothing would have been printed.
Note: your current StringTokenizer "in" has 4 tokens - consecutive delimiters (without text between them) don't produce a (null) token.

[Roy Sin]

okie... does anyone out there have any ideas of how to get pass this limitation... other than putting space between the delimiters ? anyway, fyi.. the int c starts with 1 .....

[Dirk Schreckmann]

Originally posted by Roy Sin:
okie... does anyone out there have any ideas of how to get pass this limitation... other than putting space between the delimiters ? anyway, fyi.. the int c starts with 1 .....

If c starts as 1, it never gets to 6 in your current code.
Within the past 3 weeks (maybe 2 even) this topic was discussed in the Beginner's forum and one or two solutions were presented. Look at the top right of this page for the search page.

[Roy Sin]

hahahah.. it seems that i am the only one replying myself.. but hey.. i found out the solution.. so i m here to share it....
as u know.. there is a limitation for string tokenizer.. so to get ard the prob.. i counted the total no of elements in the row.. then i count the no. of elements that are not delimiters.. then i subtracted the two...
for e.g.
i want to get the number 6 from column 6....
|||4||6|

 
int fieldNo = 1;
int noTokens = 0;
int column = 0;
String lineRead = "";
FileReader inputFile = new FileReader("c:\\temp\\count.txt");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(inputFile);
line = br.readLine();
StringTokenizer in = new StringTokenizer(line,"|",true);
while (in.hasMoreTokens())
{
   lineRead = in.nextToken();
   if (!lineRead.equals("|"))
   {
      column = fieldNo - noTokens;
      // 6   =   8     -   2
      if (column == 6)
      {
           System.out.println("The no is : " + lineRead);
      }
      noTokens++;
    }
    fieldNo++;
}   

Hope it helps anyone with the same problem..

[Steve Deadsea]

There are also StringTokenizer replacements that will return null tokens. I've written one:
http://ostermiller.org/utils/StringTokenizer.html