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up vote 3 down vote favorite

I have a string in Java like this: 

String s = "{{\"2D\", \"array\"}, {\"represented\", \"in a string\"}}"

How can I convert it into an actual array? Like so:

String[][] a = {{"2D", "array"}, {"represented", "in a string"}}

(What I'm looking for is a solution a bit like python's eval())

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Maybe you could regard it as a JSON input. Take a look at this code.google.com/p/google-gson Maybe there's a way to parse string objects. –  broncoAbierto Oct 27 '12 at 11:54
 
@broncoAbierto: It's not in JSON format, arrays in JSON use [...], not {...}. If it's really as simple as shown, of course the OP could do a replaceAll first to change those over, but it's probably not actually as simple as shown. –  T.J. Crowder Oct 27 '12 at 11:55
3  
The real question is, what situation are you running into that requires you to do this? –  9ee1 Oct 27 '12 at 11:57
3  
... and what have you tried so far that isn't working? I'm surprised a question that shows no research effort at all is getting so many up-votes. –  Duncan Oct 27 '12 at 11:59
1  
Your example makes no sense. You declare a String[] and initialize it with String[][]. If you don't know in advance the dimensionality of your array, this is not a simple problem at all. –  Marko Topolnik Oct 27 '12 at 12:02
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1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I strongly suggest that you use a json capable library to parse your String. However, just for fun, please take a look at the code below, that does the thing you need using only String methods:

String s = "{{\"2D\", \"array\"}, {\"represented\", \"in a string\"}}";
s = s.replace("{", "");
String[] s0 = s.split("},\\s");
int length = s0.length;
String[][] a = new String[length][];
for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
    a[i] = s0[i].replace("}", "").split(",\\s");
}
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6  
Where this will fail is any { or } occuring in the strings. –  Marko Topolnik Oct 27 '12 at 12:08
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