Question

I am trying to form a regex that functions as mentioned below:

String killing of <span class="abc">cats</span>, hi <span class="xyz">dogs</span>,

Splits into :

1. killing
2. of
3. <span class="abc">cats</span>,
4. hi
5. <span class="xyz">dogs</span>,

This regex \\<.*?\\>| splits it but tags are stripped and , after tags is a new string.

Answer 1

Can’t help with a split(), but here’s a solution with a sequential find():

final String s =
    "killing of <span class=\"abc\">cats</span>, "
    + "hi <span class=\"xyz\">dogs</span>,";
final Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile(
    "(<.*?>.*?</.*?>|\\w+)\\p{Punct}*").matcher(s);
while (matcher.find()) {
    System.out.println(matcher.group());
}

Output:

killing
of
<span class="abc">cats</span>,
hi
<span class="xyz">dogs</span>,