What is the Split() method?

The split() functions splits a single String into an array of multiple Strings. The parameter tells the method where to split. For example my String is "Agatha,Mark,Carrie" and I want to split at the comma.

String names = "Agatha,Mark,Carrie";

String[] namesAsArray = names.split(","); 

Now the variable namesAsArray contains {"Agatha", "Mark", "Carrie"} . It means you can treat each name as a separate entity, instead of having a single string.

Here is the doc: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#split(java.lang.String)

The split() function accepts regex patterns, which allows you to match different characters or character patterns. '\\|' is how you tell the function to split at the character | (the reson for the '\\' is because | is a special character in regex).