Question

I have a piece of code which basically translates English into text speak.

At the moment I am using the String.split() method and using \\\W as the delimiter, removing all non word characters.

As it stands this is what I get:

input:I hate text speak!:)
output:I h8 txt spk

Is there anyway I do not lose the delimiters?

EDIT:Here’s the method that does the parsing.As it stands it replaces the delimiter with a space so at least its still readable…

public static String engToText(String text){
                    text=text.toLowerCase();
                    String translated=" ";


                    //breaks string into tokens
                    String[] tokens = text.split("\\W");

                    for(int x=0;x<tokens.length;x++){
                        if(wordMapEng.containsKey(tokens[x])){
                            translated+=" "+wordMapEng.get(tokens[x]);
                        }else{
                            translated+=" " + tokens[x];
                        }
                    }


                    return translated.trim();
                }

Answer 1

You can use the StringTokenizer class which has a

StringTokenizer(String str, String delim, boolean returnDelims) 

constuctor which when iterating over the tokens gives you back the delimeters too.