Question

I am trying to take from a file all the valid words. Valid words are defined as normal characters that can appear like so:

don't won't can't

and I have to ignore commas periods and exclamation points.

I have gotten the expression to just get characters but now it won’t get words like don't and can't or won't.

This is the expression I am using "[^A-Za-z]+" and I have tried "\'[^A-Za-z]+" but this breaks and allows all characters. Does anyone have any idea what I can use to get normal words including don’t and won’t and can’t and such words.

Thank you very much

Answer 1

[^A-Za-z] Would mean anything NOT matching those character ranges! Try this:

[A-Za-z']

You may need to escape the single quote, in which case you’ll probably need to escape the slash that escapes it:

[A-Za-z\\']