Java: Keep empty fields in Split-Array

When using the split function in Java in order to separate a string at a given character, by default, the resulting array does not contain any empty fields.

In some cases - for example when reading and editing CSV files containing empty columns - that is not wanted. That is why, I would like to show you in this tip how to keep the empty fields also in Java:

String s = "1;;3;4";

String[] r1 = s.split(";");       // -> "1", "3", "4"
String[] r2 = s.split(";", -1);   // -> "1", "", "3", "4"

As we can see from this example, the trick is to pass a -1 as the second parameter. The second parameter normally specifies the limit of the resulting array - that is the number of how many parts of the string should be separated maximally.