Understanding regex in Java: split("\t") vs split("\\t") - when do they both work, and when should they be used
When using "\t"
, the escape sequence \t
is replaced by Java with the character U+0009. When using "\\t"
, the escape sequence \\
in \\t
is replaced by Java with \
, resulting in \t
that is then interpreted by the regular expression parser as the character U+0009.
So both notations will be interpreted correctly. It’s just the question when it is replaced with the corresponding character.