What is the regex pattern for comma, space plus a certain word?

Question

I need to split a string using Java's split() method. How to write the regex pattern for delimiters that is a certain word? For example, "and"?

I got the pattern for splitting space and comma which is [,\\s] but I want to add the word, and so that it also becomes a delimiter.

I tried many combinations including [,\\s]|(and) but no luck.

Answer 1

Not really sure without an input and desired output, but you could change your last pattern to something like: \\s(?!and|,)|\\s*,\\s*|\\s+and\\s+.

For instance:

String toSplit = "Blah,blah, foo ,bar and blah again";
System.out.println(
    Arrays.toString(
        toSplit.split(
//            ┌ whitespace not followed by "and" or ","
//            |           ┌ or
//            |           | ┌ 0/more whitespace, ",", 0/more whitespace
//            |           | |       ┌ or
//            |           | |       |┌ 1/more whitespace, "and", 1/more ws
//            |           | |       ||
             "\\s(?!and|,)|\\s*,\\s*|\\s+and\\s+"
        )
    )
);

Output

[Blah, blah, foo, bar, blah, again]

Answer 2

You can use an alternation operator. Here is a sample program:

String string = "My mother and I";
String[] parts = string.split("(?:[,\\s]|and)");
for (int i=0; i<parts.length; i++) {
    System.out.println(parts[i]);
}

Output:

My                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
mother                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 


I   

Answer 3

You can try:

String[] toks = input.split( "\\s*\\band\b\\s*|[,\\s]" );