Java regex mix two patterns

Question

How can i get this pattern to work:

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[\\p{P}\\p{Z}]");

Basically, this will split my String[] sentence by any kind of punctuation character (p{P} or any kind of whitespace (p{Z}). But i want to exclude the following case:

(?<![A-Za-z-])[A-Za-z]+(?:-[A-Za-z]+){1,}(?![A-Za-z-])

pattern explained here: Java regex patterns

which are the hyphened words like this: "aaa-bb", "aaa-bb-cc", "aaa-bb-c-dd". SO, i can i do that?

i dont want to allow this: "--aa", or "bb--c", etc. This two patterns work, i just need to mix the two. — recoInrelax
– recoInrelax, Commented Oct 5, 2011 at 18:24
Well, then... perhaps [\\p{P}\\p{Z}^(?<![A-Za-z-])[A-Za-z]+(?:-[A-Za-z]+){1,}(?![A-Za-z-])] — user684934
– user684934, Commented Oct 5, 2011 at 18:26
Sorry, your question is not very clear. You want to match any split between words that is not a hyphen? — Chriszuma
– Chriszuma, Commented Oct 5, 2011 at 18:44

Thomas · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-05 20:20:42Z

1

Unfortunately it seems like you can't merge both expressions, at least as far as I know.

However, maybe you can reformulate your problem.

If, for example, you want to split between words (which can contain hyphens), try this expression:

(?>[^\p{L}-]+|-[^\p{L}]+|^-|-$)

This should match any sequence of non-letter characters that are not a minus or any minus that is followed my a non-letter character or that is the first or last character in the input.

Using this expression for a split should result in this:

input="aaa-bb, aaa-bb-cc, aaa-bb-c-dd,no--match,--foo"
ouput={"aaa-bb","aaa-bb-cc","aaa-bb-c-dd","no","match","","foo"}

The regex might need some additional optimization but it is a start.

Edit: This expression should get rid of the empty string in the split:

(?>[^\p{L}-][^\p{L}]*|-[^\p{L}]+|^-|-$)

The first part would now read as "any non-character which is not a minus followed by any number of non-character characters" and should match .-- as well.

Edit: in case you want to match words that could potentially contain hyphens, try this expression:

(?>(?<=[^-\p{L}])|^)\p{L}+(?:-\p{L}+)*(?>(?=[^-\p{L}])|$)

This means "any sequence of letters (\p{L}+) followed by any number of sequences consisting of one minus and at least one more letters ((?:-\p{L}+)*+). That sequence must be preceeded by either the start or anything not a letter or minus ((?>(?<=[^-\p{L}])|^)) and be followed by anything that is not a letter or minus or the end of the input ((?>(?=[^-\p{L}])|$))".

edited Oct 5, 2011 at 20:20

answered Oct 5, 2011 at 19:10

Thomas

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2 Comments

recoInrelax Over a year ago

hm thanks that works. But i need to exclude the cases in which "-" comes first, like: "-a", "-aa-bb" etc..

Thomas Over a year ago

@user974594 so "-aa-bb" should not be split into "" and "aa-bb"? Could you then provide an example input and expected output? It is not so clear what you're actually trying to achieve.

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