StringTokenizer - why does it take [|] and [] as the same?

[Rachel Swailes]

I'm writing to code to tokenise this string

String theString = "[e-mail][|][e-mail],00887217904202[&][e-mail],00884457850456[&][e-mail],[|]False[|][|]31/05/2004 08:48:43[|][|]"

StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(theString, "[|]");

When I read it I get; (I'm counting the tokens at the start of the line)
8 [e-mail]
7 [e-mail],00887217904202
6 &
5 [e-mail],00884457850456
4 &
3 [e-mail],
2 False
1 31/05/2004 08:48:43

The question is, why do the &'s next to 6 and 4 appear? And I am only expecting 6 tokens. Can anyone give some advice?

Thanks, Rachel

[bart zagers]

Hi,

the "problem" is that the constructor does not work as you assume.

StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(theString, "[|]");

The tokenizer does not use "[|]" as a delimiter, but each occurrence of any of the characters in the string, "[" or "|" or "]"

Bart

[Rachel Swailes]

Well, I guess that makes sense...

Thanks!