Java: Searching for a Regex that splits a text into separate words, including letters, numbers and &-CodePudding

At the moment I have: text.split("[^\\w ]" But I also need to include words like: Can't but not something like: 'HEART'

I can't find a solution, that splits a text into words, including the letters, numbers and the aposthroph, if it's between other letters. Thx

CodePudding user response：

If you want to match words using \w, instead of using split you can use word boundaries and assert not ' at the left and at the right.

\b(?<!')\w (?:'\w )*\b(?!')

In Java

String regex = "\\b(?<!')\\w (?:'\\w )*\\b(?!')";
String string = "Can't but not something like: 'HEART'";

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile(regex);
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(string);

while (matcher.find()) {
    System.out.println(matcher.group(0));
}

Output

Can't
but
not
something
like

CodePudding user response：

It may be simpler to get rid of the single quotes/apostrophes when they occur before/after the word, and then split using the initial delimiter pattern with excluded apostrophe:

String text = "Modern Talking's Hit:  'You're my heart, you're my soul', 1985";
String[] words = text.replaceAll("(?:^|\\W)'|'(?:\\W|$)", "").split("[^\\w^'] ");
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(words));

Output:

[Modern, Talking's, Hit, You're, my, heart, you're, my, soul, 1985]

CodePudding user response：

Instead of splitting, you could use Pattern and MatchResult libraries to list the words you want with \w ('\w )? regex

import java.util.regex.Pattern;
import java.util.regex.MatchResult;

String regex = "\\w ('\\w )?";
String text = "sampl'e 'text'";

String[] words = Pattern.compile(regex)
                          .matcher(text)
                          .results()
                          .map(MatchResult::group)
                          .toArray(String[]::new);

You could also split for a whitespace surrounded (or not) by apostrophes

text.split("'?\s'?");