How to convert a String into an ArrayList?

Question

Try something like

List<String> myList = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(s.split(",")));

• Arrays.asList documentation
• String.split documentation
• ArrayList(Collection) constructor documentation

---

Demo:

String s = "lorem,ipsum,dolor,sit,amet";

List<String> myList = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(s.split(",")));

System.out.println(myList);  // prints [lorem, ipsum, dolor, sit, amet]

---

This post has been rewritten as an article here.

 String s1="[a,b,c,d]";
 String replace = s1.replace("[","");
 System.out.println(replace);
 String replace1 = replace.replace("]","");
 System.out.println(replace1);
 List<String> myList = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(replace1.split(",")));
 System.out.println(myList.toString());

Option1:

List<String> list = Arrays.asList("hello");

Option2:

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList("hello"));

In my opinion, Option1 is better because

1. we can reduce the number of ArrayList objects being created from 2 to 1. asList method creates and returns an ArrayList Object.
2. its performance is much better (but it returns a fixed-size list).

Please refer to the documentation here

In Java 9, using List#of, which is an Immutable List Static Factory Methods, become more simpler.

 String s = "a,b,c,d,e,.........";
 List<String> lst = List.of(s.split(","));

Ok i'm going to extend on the answers here since a lot of the people who come here want to split the string by a whitespace. This is how it's done:

List<String> List = new ArrayList<String>(Arrays.asList(s.split("\\s+")));

Easier to understand is like this:

String s = "a,b,c,d,e";
String[] sArr = s.split(",");
List<String> sList = Arrays.asList(sArr);

If you are importing or you have an array (of type string) in your code and you have to convert it into arraylist (offcourse string) then use of collections is better. like this:

String array1[] = getIntent().getExtras().getStringArray("key1"); or String array1[] = ... then

List allEds = new ArrayList(); Collections.addAll(allEds, array1);