each word in order BreakIterator boundary = BreakIterator.getWordInstance(); boundary.setText(stringToExamine); printEachForward(boundary, stringToExamine); //print each sentence in reverse order boundary = BreakIterator.getSentenceInstance(Locale.US); boundary.setText(stringToExamine); printEachBackward(boundary, stringToExamine); printFirst(boundary, stringToExamine); printLast(boundary, stringToExamine); } } Print each element in order
public static void printEachForward(BreakIterator boundary, String source) { int start = boundary.first(); for (int end = boundary.next(); end != BreakIterator.DONE; start = end, end = boundary.next()) { System.out.println(source.substring(start,end)); } }
Print each element in reverse order
public static void printEachBackward(BreakIterator boundary, String source) { int end = boundary.last(); for (int start = boundary.previous(); start != BreakIterator.DONE; end = start, start = boundary.previous()) { System.out.println(source.substring(start,end)); } }
Print first element
public static void printFirst(BreakIterator boundary, String source) { int start = boundary.first(); int end = boundary.next(); System.out.println(source.substring(start,end)); }
Print last element
public static void printLast(BreakIterator boundary, String source) { int end = boundary.last(); int start = boundary.previous(); System.out.println(source.substring(start,end)); }
Print the element at a specified position
public static void printAt(BreakIterator boundary, int pos, String source) { int end = boundary.following(pos); int start = boundary.previous(); System.out.println(source.substring(start,end)); }
Find the next word
public static int nextWordStartAfter(int pos, String text) { BreakIterator wb = BreakIterator.getWordInstance(); wb.setText(text); int last = wb.following(pos); int current = wb.next(); while (current != BreakIterator.DONE) { for (int p = last; p < current; p++) { if (Character.isLetter(text.charAt(p)) return last; } last = current; current = wb.next(); } return BreakIterator.DONE; }
(The iterator returned by BreakIterator.getWordInstance() is unique in that the break positions it returns don't represent both the start and end of the thing being iterated over. That is, a sentence-break iterator returns breaks that each represent the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. With the word-break iterator, the characters between two boundaries might be a word, or they might be the punctuation or whitespace between two words. The above code uses a simple heuristic to determine which boundary is the beginning of a word: If the characters between this boundary and the next boundary include at least one letter (this can be an alphabetical letter, a CJK ideograph, a Hangul syllable, a Kana character, etc.), then the text between this boundary and the next is a word; otherwise, it's the material between words.)
@see CharacterIterator
@stable ICU 2.0