Regex String.split( )

Question

I'm using java to split a String of the form:

String stringToSplit = "AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF GGG HHH III JJJ KKK";

I'm using

String[] tokens = stringToParse.split("\\s");

to split the strings along whitespace, giving:

tokens = {"AAA","BBB","CCC", "DDD","EEE","FFF","GGG","HHH","III", "JJJ", "KKK"}

What I need to do now is split along whitespace for most of them, but also keep some strings together in specific cases. For instance, I want "CCC DDD" and "III JJJ KKK" to stay as their full strings when I split. So I want my array of tokens to be:

tokens = {"AAA","BBB","CCC DDD","EEE","FFF","GGG","HHH","III JJJ KKK"}

What regex would I use? Is this possible?

If the format is fixed, you can use substring() instead of regex. — jlordo
– jlordo, Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 20:12
First of all, on what basis did you decide them to be together? And how are you getting that string? Can't you somehow have a different delimiter between them. Think of these questions, and may be your problem would become easier. — Rohit Jain
– Rohit Jain, Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 20:12
Its not my format. I'm parsing some weather data, almost all of it is simple tokens delimited by whitespace, except for two cases where I have one token of data with a space in the middle like CCC DDD. — mainstringargs
– mainstringargs, Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 20:17

Will · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-15 20:13:53Z

6

You could replace ccc ddd with ccc_ddd and then covert the underscore back to a space later.

You might want to invest in some kind of syntax parser if you're going to be doing lots of this kind of thing

answered Jan 15, 2013 at 20:13

Will

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1 Comment

mainstringargs Over a year ago

Didn't think of this... it could work. I'm new to regex, so I thought maybe there was a way to do it natively.

Andrew Clark · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-15 20:19:44Z

3

Instead of using split(), you could use the following method where you find all consecutive non-whitespace characters, but use alternation to also match your specific target strings that contain whitespace:

Pattern p = Pattern.compile("CCC DDD|III JJJ KKK|\\S+");
Matcher m = p.matcher("AAA BBB CCC DDD EEE FFF GGG HHH III JJJ KKK");
while(m.find()) {
    System.out.println(m.group());
}

Example: http://ideone.com/AxI1CV

answered Jan 15, 2013 at 20:19

Andrew Clark

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