Answer by finnw for string to string array conversion in java

Assuming you really want an array of single-character strings (not a char[] or Character[])

1. Using a regex:

public static String[] singleChars(String s) {
    return s.split("(?!^)");
}

The zero width negative lookahead prevents the pattern matching at the start of the input, so you don't get a leading empty string.

2. Using Guava:

import java.util.List;

import org.apache.commons.lang.ArrayUtils;

import com.google.common.base.Functions;
import com.google.common.collect.Lists;
import com.google.common.primitives.Chars;

// ...

public static String[] singleChars(String s) {
    return
        Lists.transform(Chars.asList(s.toCharArray()),
                        Functions.toStringFunction())
             .toArray(ArrayUtils.EMPTY_STRING_ARRAY);
}