[jira] [Commented] (LANG-823) StringUtils.split should handle empty strings the same as other content

["Charles Honton (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LANG-823?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=14381316#comment-14381316 ] 

Charles Honton commented on LANG-823:
-------------------------------------

If StringUtils is just trying to make String well behaved for null inputs, then the following unit test should pass:
    	assertArrayEquals("".split(","), StringUtils.split("", ",")); 

Currently, StringUtils.split("", ",") returns a zero length array and "".split(",") returns a single element array containing the empty string.



> StringUtils.split should handle empty strings the same as other content
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: LANG-823
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LANG-823
>             Project: Commons Lang
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: lang.*
>    Affects Versions: 2.5
>            Reporter: Mark Farnsworth
>            Assignee: Benedikt Ritter
>            Priority: Minor
>             Fix For: Review Patch, Discussion, 3.x
>
>         Attachments: LANG-823.patch, LANG-823.test.patch
>
>
> When a user issues a split with a delimiter and the string does not contain the delimiter the result is normally an array with one item that contains the content of the string.
> It seems strange that StringUtils does not behave consistently in the context of an empty string.
> For example,
> {code}
> package maf.test;
> import junit.framework.TestCase;
> import org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils;
> public class StringUtilsTest extends TestCase {
> 	public void testStringUtils() {
> 		// The following two lines work correctly  
> 		assertTrue(StringUtils.split("x",",")[0].equals("x"));
> 		assertTrue(StringUtils.split(" ",",")[0].equals(" "));
> 		
> 		// The following should also work but 
> 		// in commons-lang-2.5.jar the test fails here
> 		assertTrue(StringUtils.split("",",")[0].equals("")); 
> 	}
> }
> {code}
> There seems to be no logic behind making split work differently in the case of empty strings.  
> For the next release, I would suggest a behavior change for StringUtils this will have side effects but would be more logically consistent.  
> Users who depend on the old behavior could stick with 2.5 release and/or implement code in the caller to simulate the behavior.



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