Faster split than String.split() and StringTokenizer?

Question

First I imrpoved performance of split by replacing the String.split() call with a custom method using StringTokenizer:
                final StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer(string, separator, true);
                String token = null;
                String lastToken = separator; //if first token is separator
                while (st.hasMoreTokens()) {
                    token = st.nextToken();
                    if (token.equals(separator)) {
                        if (lastToken.equals(separator)) { //no value between 2 separators?
                            result.add(emptyStrings ? "" : null);
                    } else {
                        result.add(token);
                    lastToken = token;
                }//next tokenBut this is still not very fast (as it is one of the "hot spots" in my profiling sessions). I wonder if it can go still faster to split strings with ";" as the delimiter?

Answer 1

Yup, for simple splitting without escaping of separators, indexOf is more than twice as fast:
    static private List<String> fastSplit(final String text, char separator, final boolean emptyStrings) {
        final List<String> result = new ArrayList<String>();
        if (text != null && text.length() > 0) {
            int index1 = 0;
            int index2 = text.indexOf(separator);
            while (index2 >= 0) {
                String token = text.substring(index1, index2);
                result.add(token);
                index1 = index2 + 1;
                index2 = text.indexOf(separator, index1);
            if (index1 < text.length() - 1) {
                result.add(text.substring(index1));
        }//else: input unavailable
        return result;
    }Faster? ;-)