Delimiter characters are not included in the elements of the returned array.

If this instance does not contain any of the characters in separator, the returned array consists of a single element that contains this instance.

If the separator parameter is nullNothingnullptra null reference (Nothing in Visual Basic) or contains no characters, white-space characters are assumed to be the delimiters. The following table lists the white-space characters recognized by the Split method. (It is slightly different than the white-space characters recognized by the String..::.Trim method.)

Each element of separator defines a separate delimiter character. If two delimiters are adjacent, or a delimiter is found at the beginning or end of this instance, the corresponding array element contains Empty.

For example:

Performance Considerations

The following example demonstrates how to extract individual words from a block of text by treating white space and punctuation marks as delimiters. The character array passed to the separator parameter of the String..::.Split(array<Char>[]()[]) method consists of a space character and a tab character, together with some common punctuation symbols.

Public Class SplitTest
    Public Shared Sub Main()
        Dim words As String = "This is a list of words, with: a bit of punctuation" + _
                              vbTab + "and a tab character."
        Dim split As String() = words.Split(New [Char]() {" "c, ","c, "."c, ":"c, CChar(vbTab) })

        For Each s As String In  split
            If s.Trim() <> "" Then
                Console.WriteLine(s)
            End If
        Next s
    End Sub 'Main
End Class 'SplitTest
' The example displays the following output to the console:
'       This
'       is
'       a
'       list
'       of
'       words
'       with
'       a
'       bit
'       of
'       punctuation
'       and
'       a
'       tab
'       character

using System;

public class SplitTest {
    public static void Main() {

        string words = "This is a list of words, with: a bit of punctuation" +
                       "\tand a tab character.";

        string [] split = words.Split(new Char [] {' ', ',', '.', ':', '\t' });

        foreach (string s in split) {

            if (s.Trim() != "")
                Console.WriteLine(s);
        }
    }
}
// The example displays the following output to the console:
//       This
//       is
//       a
//       list
//       of
//       words
//       with
//       a
//       bit
//       of
//       punctuation
//       and
//       a
//       tab
//       character

Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Starter Edition, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2000 SP4, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 98, Windows CE, Windows Mobile for Smartphone, Windows Mobile for Pocket PC, Xbox 360, Zune

.NET Framework

.NET Compact Framework

XNA Framework

Reference