java - How to Split text by Numbers and Group of words

Question

Assuming I have a string containing - some comma separated string - and text

  my_string =  "2 Marine Cargo       14,642 10,528       16,016 more text 8,609 argA 2,106 argB"

I would like to extract them into an array that is split by "Numbers" and "group of words"

 resultArray = {"2", "Marine Cargo", "14,642", "10,528", "16,016",
                "more text", "8,609", "argA", "2,106", "argB"};

note 0: there might be multiple spaces between each entries, which should be ignored.

note 1: "Marine Cargo" and "more text" is not separated into different strings since they are a group of words without numbers separating them. while argA and argB are separated because there's a number between them.

Answer 1

you can try splitting using this regex

([d,]+|[a-zA-Z]+ *[a-zA-Z]*) //note the spacing between + and *.

• [0-9,]+ // will search for one or more digits and commas

• [a-zA-Z]+ [a-zA-Z] // will search for a word, followed by a space(if any) followed by another word(if any).

  String regEx = "[0-9,]+|[a-zA-Z]+ *[a-zA-Z]*";
  

you use them like this

public static void main(String args[]) {

  String input = new String("2 Marine Cargo       14,642 10,528       16,016 more text 8,609 argA 2,106 argB");
  System.out.println("Return Value :" );      

  Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[0-9,]+|[a-zA-Z]+ *[a-zA-Z]*");

  ArrayList<String> result = new ArrayList<String>();
  Matcher m = pattern.matcher(input);
  while (m.find()) { 
         System.out.println(">"+m.group(0)+"<");  
         result.add(m.group(0));

   }
}

The following is the output as well as a detailed explaination of the RegEx that is autogenerated from https://regex101.com

1st Alternative [0-9,]+
Match a single character present in the list below [0-9,]+
+ Quantifier — Matches between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
0-9 a single character in the range between 0 (index 48) and 9 (index 57) (case sensitive)
, matches the character , literally (case sensitive)


2nd Alternative [a-zA-Z]+ *[a-zA-Z]*
Match a single character present in the list below [a-zA-Z]+
+ Quantifier — Matches between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
a-z a single character in the range between a (index 97) and z (index 122) (case sensitive)
A-Z a single character in the range between A (index 65) and Z (index 90) (case sensitive)
 * matches the character   literally (case sensitive)
* Quantifier — Matches between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
Match a single character present in the list below [a-zA-Z]*
* Quantifier — Matches between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed (greedy)
a-z a single character in the range between a (index 97) and z (index 122) (case sensitive)
A-Z a single character in the range between A (index 65) and Z (index 90) (case sensitive)