diff --git a/hyracks-fullstack/hyracks/hyracks-util/src/main/java/org/apache/hyracks/util/string/UTF8StringUtil.java b/hyracks-fullstack/hyracks/hyracks-util/src/main/java/org/apache/hyracks/util/string/UTF8StringUtil.java
index f50fa90..2b0e49e 100644
--- a/hyracks-fullstack/hyracks/hyracks-util/src/main/java/org/apache/hyracks/util/string/UTF8StringUtil.java
+++ b/hyracks-fullstack/hyracks/hyracks-util/src/main/java/org/apache/hyracks/util/string/UTF8StringUtil.java
@@ -324,6 +324,20 @@
         return builder;
     }
 
+    // Different from the above toString() methods, here we assume the byte[] doesn't contain NumBytesToStoreLength
+    // In fact, this is used for string tokenizer: get "hello" and "world" from the bytes of "hello world"
+    public static String getUTF8StringInArray(byte[] b, int start, int len) {
+        StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
+
+        for (int i = start; i < start + len;) {
+            char c = UTF8StringUtil.charAt(b, i);
+            builder.append(c);
+            i += UTF8StringUtil.charSize(b, i);
+        }
+
+        return builder.toString();
+    }
+
     public static void printUTF8StringWithQuotes(byte[] b, int s, int l, OutputStream os) throws IOException {
         printUTF8String(b, s, l, os, true);
     }
diff --git a/hyracks-fullstack/hyracks/hyracks-util/src/test/java/org/apache/hyracks/util/string/UTF8StringUtilTest.java b/hyracks-fullstack/hyracks/hyracks-util/src/test/java/org/apache/hyracks/util/string/UTF8StringUtilTest.java
index b75d68c..2c99104 100644
--- a/hyracks-fullstack/hyracks/hyracks-util/src/test/java/org/apache/hyracks/util/string/UTF8StringUtilTest.java
+++ b/hyracks-fullstack/hyracks/hyracks-util/src/test/java/org/apache/hyracks/util/string/UTF8StringUtilTest.java
@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@
 import static org.apache.hyracks.util.string.UTF8StringUtil.getModifiedUTF8Len;
 import static org.apache.hyracks.util.string.UTF8StringUtil.getNumBytesToStoreLength;
 import static org.apache.hyracks.util.string.UTF8StringUtil.getStringLength;
+import static org.apache.hyracks.util.string.UTF8StringUtil.getUTF8StringInArray;
 import static org.apache.hyracks.util.string.UTF8StringUtil.getUTFLength;
 import static org.apache.hyracks.util.string.UTF8StringUtil.hash;
 import static org.apache.hyracks.util.string.UTF8StringUtil.lowerCaseCompareTo;
@@ -42,6 +43,7 @@
 import static org.junit.Assert.assertTrue;
 
 import java.io.IOException;
+import java.util.List;
 
 import org.junit.Test;
 
@@ -153,4 +155,25 @@
         assertTrue(familyOne != familyTwo);
     }
 
+    @Test
+    public void testGetUTF8StringInArray() {
+        String str = null;
+        byte[] bytes = null;
+        List<String> answer = null;
+
+        str = "database group at university of California, Irvine 23333";
+        bytes = writeStringToBytes(str);
+        // First byte in bytes is for the number of bytes of the entire string,
+        // and it should be skipped in getUTF8StringInArray
+        assertEquals("database", getUTF8StringInArray(bytes, 1, 8));
+        assertEquals("at", getUTF8StringInArray(bytes, 16, 2));
+        // test upper case
+        assertEquals("California", getUTF8StringInArray(bytes, 33, 10));
+        // test non-english char
+        assertEquals(",", getUTF8StringInArray(bytes, 43, 1));
+        assertEquals("Irvine", getUTF8StringInArray(bytes, 45, 6));
+        // test number
+        assertEquals("23333", getUTF8StringInArray(bytes, 52, 5));
+    }
+
 }