Splitting by Tabs in Java

Question

I have a file scanned line by line into an ArrayList. I then create a new ArrayList in which I want to temporarily store that line into so that I may access certain values.

Ex. IDname(tab)IDnumber(tab)vote(tab)date

So, I create the temporary ArrayList named voteSubmission, and I go through every String in the fileRead array.

Why is it that I get the error incompatible type for my split method?

ArrayList<String> voteSubmission = new ArrayList<String>(); 
for(String x : fileRead)
{
voteSubmission =  x.split("\t");
}

Solution 1

The split method returns an array, not an ArrayList.

Either work with an array or convert it to an ArrayList manually.

Solution 2

x.split("\t"); this function will return an array not array list

The split function states that:

Splits this string around matches of the given regular expression.

This method works as if by invoking the two-argument split method with the given expression and a limit argument of zero. Trailing empty strings are therefore not included in the resulting array.

Returns:

the array of strings computed by splitting this string around matches of the given regular expression

You may try to change your code like this:

ArrayList<String> voteSubmission = new ArrayList<String>(); 
    for(String x : fileRead)
    {
        for(String value: x.split("\t"))
        {
            voteSubmission.add(value);
        }
    }