Need help with regEx

How exactly do regular expressions work in Java? Let's say I have the string:

Code :

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String test = new String("Sally went to the barn.");
//any string will do this is for experimentation purposes

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and I wanted to use the String's split() function... or any regEx function to get all the words out and put them into a neat little ArrayList<String> (or even better a Hashtable<String, Integer> that'll count the amount of times each word appears).

I tried:

Code :

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String regEx = "\w";
String[] splitter = test.split(regEx);
 
for(int i=0;i<splitter.length;i++){
			System.out.println(splitter[i]);
		}

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But the compiler tells me that "\w" is "an invalid escape sequence. How would I go about extracting every word from a string and putting it into a data structure? Please help, I'm so lost.

When you type into the code '\w', it's looking for a single character code which matches that escape character string (which doesn't exist). If you want the Java to use "\w" as a string,you must provide the escape character for the back-slash.

Code Java:

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String regEx = "\\w"; // notice the two back-slashes, while in the code it will look like this the string will actually represent "\w" (two characters)
String[] splitter = test.split(regEx);
//... rest of code

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instead of "\w" you can just use a space.

Code java:

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String[] splitter = test.split(" ");
 
for(int i=0;i<splitter.length;i++){
			System.out.println(splitter[i]);
		}

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If you dont want the period in the token just remove the period(s) before you tokenize it.

Code java:

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test=test.replace(".", "");
String[] splitter = test.split(" ");
 
for(int i=0;i<splitter.length;i++){
			System.out.println(splitter[i]);
		}

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Brt93yoda

instead of "\w" you can just use a space.

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The word character and a space are not mutually interchangeable.

Quote:

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If you dont want the period in the token just remove the period(s) before you tokenize it.

Code java:

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test=test.replace(".", "");
String[] splitter = test.split(" ");
 
for(int i=0;i<splitter.length;i++){
			System.out.println(splitter[i]);
		}

---

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1. Where did you get that requirement from?
2. The OP's question was about regexes. String#replace has nothing whatsoever to do with the question.

It appears that you have blindly posted answers you know even though they don't relate to the question asked.

db

Sorry about that.