[java] Split string to equal length substrings in Java

How to split the string "Thequickbrownfoxjumps" to substrings of equal size in Java. Eg. "Thequickbrownfoxjumps" of 4 equal size should give the output.

["Theq","uick","brow","nfox","jump","s"]

Similar Question:

Split string into equal-length substrings in Scala

public static String[] split(String src, int len) {
    String[] result = new String[(int)Math.ceil((double)src.length()/(double)len)];
    for (int i=0; i<result.length; i++)
        result[i] = src.substring(i*len, Math.min(src.length(), (i+1)*len));
    return result;
}

I'd rather this simple solution:

String content = "Thequickbrownfoxjumps";
while(content.length() > 4) {
    System.out.println(content.substring(0, 4));
    content = content.substring(4);
}
System.out.println(content);

Here is a one liner implementation using Java8 streams:

String input = "Thequickbrownfoxjumps";
final AtomicInteger atomicInteger = new AtomicInteger(0);
Collection<String> result = input.chars()
                                    .mapToObj(c -> String.valueOf((char)c) )
                                    .collect(Collectors.groupingBy(c -> atomicInteger.getAndIncrement() / 4
                                                                ,Collectors.joining()))
                                    .values();

It gives the following output:

[Theq, uick, brow, nfox, jump, s]

i use the following java 8 solution:

public static List<String> splitString(final String string, final int chunkSize) {
  final int numberOfChunks = (string.length() + chunkSize - 1) / chunkSize;
  return IntStream.range(0, numberOfChunks)
                  .mapToObj(index -> string.substring(index * chunkSize, Math.min((index + 1) * chunkSize, string.length())))
                  .collect(toList());
}

In case you want to split the string equally backwards, i.e. from right to left, for example, to split 1010001111 to [10, 1000, 1111], here's the code:

/**
 * @param s         the string to be split
 * @param subLen    length of the equal-length substrings.
 * @param backwards true if the splitting is from right to left, false otherwise
 * @return an array of equal-length substrings
 * @throws ArithmeticException: / by zero when subLen == 0
 */
public static String[] split(String s, int subLen, boolean backwards) {
    assert s != null;
    int groups = s.length() % subLen == 0 ? s.length() / subLen : s.length() / subLen + 1;
    String[] strs = new String[groups];
    if (backwards) {
        for (int i = 0; i < groups; i++) {
            int beginIndex = s.length() - subLen * (i + 1);
            int endIndex = beginIndex + subLen;
            if (beginIndex < 0)
                beginIndex = 0;
            strs[groups - i - 1] = s.substring(beginIndex, endIndex);
        }
    } else {
        for (int i = 0; i < groups; i++) {
            int beginIndex = subLen * i;
            int endIndex = beginIndex + subLen;
            if (endIndex > s.length())
                endIndex = s.length();
            strs[i] = s.substring(beginIndex, endIndex);
        }
    }
    return strs;
}

You can use substring from String.class (handling exceptions) or from Apache lang commons (it handles exceptions for you)

static String   substring(String str, int start, int end) 

Put it inside a loop and you are good to go.

Another brute force solution could be,

    String input = "thequickbrownfoxjumps";
    int n = input.length()/4;
    String[] num = new String[n];

    for(int i = 0, x=0, y=4; i<n; i++){
    num[i]  = input.substring(x,y);
    x += 4;
    y += 4;
    System.out.println(num[i]);
    }

Where the code just steps through the string with substrings

Here is my version based on RegEx and Java 8 streams. It's worth to mention that Matcher.results() method is available since Java 9.

Test included.

public static List<String> splitString(String input, int splitSize) {
    Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile("(?:(.{" + splitSize + "}))+?").matcher(input);
    return matcher.results().map(MatchResult::group).collect(Collectors.toList());
}

@Test
public void shouldSplitStringToEqualLengthParts() {
    String anyValidString = "Split me equally!";
    String[] expectedTokens2 = {"Sp", "li", "t ", "me", " e", "qu", "al", "ly"};
    String[] expectedTokens3 = {"Spl", "it ", "me ", "equ", "all"};

    Assert.assertArrayEquals(expectedTokens2, splitString(anyValidString, 2).toArray());
    Assert.assertArrayEquals(expectedTokens3, splitString(anyValidString, 3).toArray());
}

public static List<String> getSplittedString(String stringtoSplit,
            int length) {

        List<String> returnStringList = new ArrayList<String>(
                (stringtoSplit.length() + length - 1) / length);

        for (int start = 0; start < stringtoSplit.length(); start += length) {
            returnStringList.add(stringtoSplit.substring(start,
                    Math.min(stringtoSplit.length(), start + length)));
        }

        return returnStringList;
    }

Well, it's fairly easy to do this with simple arithmetic and string operations:

public static List<String> splitEqually(String text, int size) {
    // Give the list the right capacity to start with. You could use an array
    // instead if you wanted.
    List<String> ret = new ArrayList<String>((text.length() + size - 1) / size);

    for (int start = 0; start < text.length(); start += size) {
        ret.add(text.substring(start, Math.min(text.length(), start + size)));
    }
    return ret;
}

I don't think it's really worth using a regex for this.

EDIT: My reasoning for not using a regex:

• This doesn't use any of the real pattern matching of regexes. It's just counting.
• I suspect the above will be more efficient, although in most cases it won't matter
• If you need to use variable sizes in different places, you've either got repetition or a helper function to build the regex itself based on a parameter - ick.
• The regex provided in another answer firstly didn't compile (invalid escaping), and then didn't work. My code worked first time. That's more a testament to the usability of regexes vs plain code, IMO.

If you're using Google's guava general-purpose libraries (and quite honestly, any new Java project probably should be), this is insanely trivial with the Splitter class:

for (String substring : Splitter.fixedLength(4).split(inputString)) {
    doSomethingWith(substring);
}

and that's it. Easy as!

public String[] splitInParts(String s, int partLength)
{
    int len = s.length();

    // Number of parts
    int nparts = (len + partLength - 1) / partLength;
    String parts[] = new String[nparts];

    // Break into parts
    int offset= 0;
    int i = 0;
    while (i < nparts)
    {
        parts[i] = s.substring(offset, Math.min(offset + partLength, len));
        offset += partLength;
        i++;
    }

    return parts;
}

public static String[] split(String input, int length) throws IllegalArgumentException {

    if(length == 0 || input == null)
        return new String[0];

    int lengthD = length * 2;

    int size = input.length();
    if(size == 0)
        return new String[0];

    int rep = (int) Math.ceil(size * 1d / length);

    ByteArrayInputStream stream = new ByteArrayInputStream(input.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_16LE));

    String[] out = new String[rep];
    byte[]  buf = new byte[lengthD];

    int d = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < rep; i++) {

        try {
            d = stream.read(buf);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        if(d != lengthD)
        {
            out[i] = new String(buf,0,d, StandardCharsets.UTF_16LE);
            continue;
        }

        out[i] = new String(buf, StandardCharsets.UTF_16LE);
    }
    return out;
}

I asked @Alan Moore in a comment to the accepted solution how strings with newlines could be handled. He suggested using DOTALL.

Using his suggestion I created a small sample of how that works:

public void regexDotAllExample() throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
    final String input = "The\nquick\nbrown\r\nfox\rjumps";
    final String regex = "(?<=\\G.{4})";

    Pattern splitByLengthPattern;
    String[] split;

    splitByLengthPattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
    split = splitByLengthPattern.split(input);
    System.out.println("---- Without DOTALL ----");
    for (int i = 0; i < split.length; i++) {
        byte[] s = split[i].getBytes("utf-8");
        System.out.println("[Idx: "+i+", length: "+s.length+"] - " + s);
    }
    /* Output is a single entry longer than the desired split size:
    ---- Without DOTALL ----
    [Idx: 0, length: 26] - [B@17cdc4a5
     */


    //DOTALL suggested in Alan Moores comment on SO: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3761521/1237974
    splitByLengthPattern = Pattern.compile(regex, Pattern.DOTALL);
    split = splitByLengthPattern.split(input);
    System.out.println("---- With DOTALL ----");
    for (int i = 0; i < split.length; i++) {
        byte[] s = split[i].getBytes("utf-8");
        System.out.println("[Idx: "+i+", length: "+s.length+"] - " + s);
    }
    /* Output is as desired 7 entries with each entry having a max length of 4:
    ---- With DOTALL ----
    [Idx: 0, length: 4] - [B@77b22abc
    [Idx: 1, length: 4] - [B@5213da08
    [Idx: 2, length: 4] - [B@154f6d51
    [Idx: 3, length: 4] - [B@1191ebc5
    [Idx: 4, length: 4] - [B@30ddb86
    [Idx: 5, length: 4] - [B@2c73bfb
    [Idx: 6, length: 2] - [B@6632dd29
     */

}

But I like @Jon Skeets solution in https://stackoverflow.com/a/3760193/1237974 also. For maintainability in larger projects where not everyone are equally experienced in Regular expressions I would probably use Jons solution.

@Test
public void regexSplit() {
    String source = "Thequickbrownfoxjumps";
    // define matcher, any char, min length 1, max length 4
    Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile(".{1,4}").matcher(source);
    List<String> result = new ArrayList<>();
    while (matcher.find()) {
        result.add(source.substring(matcher.start(), matcher.end()));
    }
    String[] expected = {"Theq", "uick", "brow", "nfox", "jump", "s"};
    assertArrayEquals(result.toArray(), expected);
}

Here's a one-liner version which uses Java 8 IntStream to determine the indexes of the slice beginnings:

String x = "Thequickbrownfoxjumps";

String[] result = IntStream
                    .iterate(0, i -> i + 4)
                    .limit((int) Math.ceil(x.length() / 4.0))
                    .mapToObj(i ->
                        x.substring(i, Math.min(i + 4, x.length())
                    )
                    .toArray(String[]::new);

This is very easy with Google Guava:

for(final String token :
    Splitter
        .fixedLength(4)
        .split("Thequickbrownfoxjumps")){
    System.out.println(token);
}

Output:

Theq
uick
brow
nfox
jump
s

Or if you need the result as an array, you can use this code:

String[] tokens =
    Iterables.toArray(
        Splitter
            .fixedLength(4)
            .split("Thequickbrownfoxjumps"),
        String.class
    );

Reference:

• Splitter.fixedLength()
• Splitter.split()
• Iterables.toArray()

Note: Splitter construction is shown inline above, but since Splitters are immutable and reusable, it's a good practice to store them in constants:

private static final Splitter FOUR_LETTERS = Splitter.fixedLength(4);

// more code

for(final String token : FOUR_LETTERS.split("Thequickbrownfoxjumps")){
    System.out.println(token);
}

A StringBuilder version:

public static List<String> getChunks(String s, int chunkSize)
{
 List<String> chunks = new ArrayList<>();
 StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(s);

while(!(sb.length() ==0)) 
{           
   chunks.add(sb.substring(0, chunkSize));
   sb.delete(0, chunkSize);

}
return chunks;

}

    import static java.lang.System.exit;
   import java.util.Scanner;
   import Java.util.Arrays.*;


 public class string123 {

public static void main(String[] args) {


  Scanner sc=new Scanner(System.in);
    System.out.println("Enter String");
    String r=sc.nextLine();
    String[] s=new String[10];
    int len=r.length();
       System.out.println("Enter length Of Sub-string");
    int l=sc.nextInt();
    int last;
    int f=0;
    for(int i=0;;i++){
        last=(f+l);
            if((last)>=len) last=len;
        s[i]=r.substring(f,last);
     // System.out.println(s[i]);

      if (last==len)break;
       f=(f+l);
    } 
    System.out.print(Arrays.tostring(s));
    }}

Result

 Enter String
 Thequickbrownfoxjumps
 Enter length Of Sub-string
 4

 ["Theq","uick","brow","nfox","jump","s"]

Java 8 solution (like this but a bit simpler):

public static List<String> partition(String string, int partSize) {
  List<String> parts = IntStream.range(0, string.length() / partSize)
    .mapToObj(i -> string.substring(i * partSize, (i + 1) * partSize))
    .collect(toList());
  if ((string.length() % partSize) != 0)
    parts.add(string.substring(string.length() / partSize * partSize));
  return parts;
}