The string tokenizer class allows an application to break a string into tokens. The tokenization method is much simpler than the one used by the
StreamTokenizer
class. The
StringTokenizer
methods do not distinguish among identifiers, numbers, and quoted strings, nor do they recognize and skip comments.
The set of delimiters (the characters that separate tokens) may be specified either at creation time or on a per-token basis.
An instance of StringTokenizer
behaves in one of two ways, depending on whether it was created with the returnDelims
flag having the value true
or false
:
- If the flag is
false
, delimiter characters serve to separate tokens. A token is a maximal sequence of consecutive characters that are not delimiters. - If the flag is
true
, delimiter characters are themselves considered to be tokens. A token is thus either one delimiter character, or a maximal sequence of consecutive characters that are not delimiters.
A StringTokenizer object internally maintains a current position within the string to be tokenized. Some operations advance this current position past the characters processed.
A token is returned by taking a substring of the string that was used to create the StringTokenizer object.
The following is one example of the use of the tokenizer. The code:
StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer("this is a test"); while (st.hasMoreTokens()) { System.out.println(st.nextToken()); }
prints the following output:
this is a test
StringTokenizer is a legacy class that is retained for compatibility reasons although its use is discouraged in new code. It is recommended that anyone seeking this functionality use the split method of String or the java.util.regex package instead.
The following example illustrates how the String.split method can be used to break up a string into its basic tokens:
String[] result = "this is a test".split("\\s"); for (int x=0; x<result.length; x++) System.out.println(result[x]);
prints the following output:
this is a test
@author unascribed
@version 1.35, 11/17/05
@see java.io.StreamTokenizer
@since JDK1.0