String split question using "*"

Question

Let's say have a string...

String myString =  "my*big*string*needs*parsing";

All I want is to get an split the string into "my" , "big" , "string", etc. So I try

myString.split("*");

returns java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Dangling meta character '*' near index 0

* is a special character in regex so I try escaping....

myString.split("\\*");

same exception. I figured someone would know a quick solution. Thanks.

Answer 1

split("\\*") works with me.

Answer 2

One escape \ will not do the trick in Java 6 on Mac OSX, as \ is reserved for \b \t \n \f \r \'\" and \\. What you have seems to work for me:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String myString =  "my*big*string*needs*parsing";
    String[] a = myString.split("\\*");
    for (String b : a) {
        System.out.println(b);
    }
}

outputs:

my
big
string
needs
parsing