Minus 1 or another value from a split.length? (Java)

Question

How would you minus from a split.length method? Would you need to assign it to an int like the code below or would you have to store the split.length value. An example I want to minus 1 from the split.length value.

 String[] split  = i.split( " " );

 int a = split.length;      
 //Split method separates Char from spaces

 a -= 1;

 System.out.println("[ " + a + "]" + " Spaces in " + '"' + i + '"' );

Answer 1

I belive what you wanted was to remove the last element from the array.

I would do it like the following,

import java.util.Arrays;

public class Test {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String i = "this is a test string";
        String[] split  = i.split(" ");

        System.out.println("Before" + split.length);

        split = Arrays.copyOf(split, split.length - 1);

        System.out.println("After" + split.length);
    }

}

Thanks to @markspace for pointing to use Arrays.copyOf

From your edit, I think you just want to print the no of spaces in string.

public class Test {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String i = "this is a test string";
        System.out.println("[" + (i.split(" ").length - 1) + "]" + " Spaces in \"" + i  + "\"");
    }

}

This should do it.