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

[Mark Farnsworth (JIRA)]

Mark Farnsworth created LANG-823:
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             Summary: 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
            Priority: Minor


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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