Split Strings in java by words

Question

How can I split the following word in to an array

That's the code

into

array
0 That
1 s
2 the
3 code

I tried something like this

String str = "That's the code";

        String[] strs = str.split("\\'");
        for (String sstr : strs) {
            System.out.println(sstr);
        }

But the output is

That
s the code

Why not use **space** when splitting? And take care of special characters like `'`. — herohuyongtao, Dec 22 '13 at 09:43
Also when we say split a string to words, we mean **That's the code** to **That's**, **the** and **code**. — herohuyongtao, Dec 22 '13 at 09:45
`That's the code` is equivalent to `That is the code`. I'm comparing sentence. — user2095165, Dec 22 '13 at 09:47
@herohuyongtao: why would we mean that? `That's` is two words: `That` and the contraction of `is` to `s`. — JB Nizet, Dec 22 '13 at 09:48
@JBNizet It depends what you mean by words. You are right when comparing sentence where treating `What's` to `What is`. :) — herohuyongtao, Dec 22 '13 at 09:49

score 17 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:43

17

To specifically split on white space and the apostrophe:

public class Split {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String [] tokens = "That's the code".split("[\\s']");
        for(String s:tokens){
            System.out.println(s);
        }
    }
}

or to split on any non word character:

public class Split {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String [] tokens = "That's the code".split("[\\W]");
        for(String s:tokens){
            System.out.println(s);
        }
    }
}

answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:43

Kevin Bowersox

93,289
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2

what the difference between [\\W] and [\\s'] – user2095165 Dec 22 '13 at 09:49
2

`\\W` represents a non-word character which is any character that is not a-z, A-Z, 0-9, including the _ (underscore) character. `\\s` represents a white space, so tabs, spaces, line breaks, etc. If I were to add something in parens `()` to the String `\\W` would split on each paren, however the `\\s` version would not. – Kevin Bowersox Dec 22 '13 at 09:52
Do you now the runtime complexity for this method? – Koogle Feb 08 '15 at 01:34

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 04 '16 at 02:29

The best solution I've found to split by words if your string contains accentuated letters is :

String[] listeMots = phrase.split("\\P{L}+");

For instance, if your String is

String phrase = "Salut mon homme, comment ça va aujourd'hui? Ce sera Noël puis Pâques bientôt.";

Then you will get the following words (enclosed within quotes and comma separated for clarity) :

"Salut", "mon", "homme", "comment", "ça", "va", "aujourd", "hui", "Ce", 
"sera", "Noël", "puis", "Pâques", "bientôt".

Hope this helps!

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:43

4

You can split according to non-characters chars:

String str = "That's the code";
String[] splitted = str.split("[\\W]");

For your input, output will be:

That
s
the
code

answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:43

Maroun

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:44

1

You can split by a regex that would be one of the two characters - quote or space:

String[] strs = str.split("['\\s]");

answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:44

Szymon

42,577
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Tareq Salah · Answer 5 · 2013-12-22T09:55:53.110

1

If you want to split on non alphabetic chars

String str = "That's the code";
String[] strs = str.split("\\P{Alpha}+");
for (String sstr : strs) {
        System.out.println(sstr);
}

\P{Alpha} matches any non-alphabetic character and this is called POSIX character you can read more about it in this link It is very useful. + indicates that we should split on any continuous string of such characters.

and the output will be

That
s
the
code

edited Dec 22 '13 at 09:55

answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:45

Tareq Salah

3,720
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+1 for Unicode version but this code may be not very clear for someone new to regex so you probably should expand your answer a little. – Pshemo Dec 22 '13 at 09:47

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:45

1

You should first replace the ' with " " (blank space), using str.replaceAll("'", " ") and then you can split the string on the blank space separator, using str.split(" ").You could alternatively use a regular expression to split on ' OR space.

answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:45

umanganiello

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Pshemo · Answer 7 · 2013-12-22T09:51:52.203

split uses regex and in regex ' is not special character so you don't need to escape it with \. To represent whitespaces you can use \s (which in String needs to be written as "\\s"). Also to create set of characters you can use "OR" operator | like a|b|c|d, or just use character class [abcd] which means exactly the same as (a|b|c|d).

To makes things simple you can use

String[] strs = str.split("'| ");

or

String[] strs = str.split("'|\\s");//to include all whitespaces

or

String[] strs = str.split("['\\s]");//equivalent of "'|\\s"

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 22 '13 at 09:49

You can use OR in regular expression

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String str = "That's the code";
        String[] strs = str.split("'|\\s");
        for (String sstr : strs) {
            System.out.println(sstr);
        }
   }

The string will be split by single quote (') or space. The single quote doesn't need to be escaped. The output would be

run:
That
s
the
code
BUILD SUCCESSFUL (total time: 0 seconds)

Split Strings in java by words

8 Answers8

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