How to make regular expression that divides line into words

Question

Tell me please how to make regular expression to separate words. Lets assume there is string

String s = "I have   dog, cat,    gold       fishes.    My cat   eats :      milk,    fish, etc.."

I need String array based on that string that looks like

 String[] words = s.split(regexp)

[I, have, dog, cat, gold, fishes, My, cat, eats, milk, fish, etc]

So regex must ignore whitespaces and punctuation(dots, commas, ?, !, )

It's a very simple task, if you read a basic tutorial about regex, you will find the answer in two minutes. An advice: using the find method is more easy. — Casimir et Hippolyte, Nov 08 '14 at 16:50

M A · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-08T21:12:46.367

1

This should work:

String[] words = s.split("[\\s,.:]+");

To include all punctuations, use \p{Punct}:

String[] words = s.split("[\\s\\p{Punct}]+");

edited Nov 08 '14 at 21:12

answered Nov 08 '14 at 16:50

M A

You don't need (and shouldn't) escape `.` inside character class. `"[\\s,.:]+"` is enough. – Pshemo Nov 08 '14 at 17:32
@Pshemo I missed it. Thank you for the tip. – M A Nov 08 '14 at 21:14

1 Answers1