[RESOLVED] Split Paragraph into sentences

[mpdeglau]

I have an app that has a paragraph(s) passed in, and I need to figure out how many sentences it has.

Right now, this is how I'm doing it:

	private long getSentenceCount(String text){
		String delim = "@@@@";
		String delim2 = "####";
		String tempText = text.replace(". ", delim);
		tempText = tempText.replace(".\r\n", delim);
		tempText = tempText.replace("! ", delim);
		tempText = tempText.replace("!\r\n", delim);
		tempText = tempText.replace("? ", delim);
		tempText = tempText.replace("?\r\n", delim);
		tempText = tempText.replace("\r\n", delim2);
		
		String [] sentences = tempText.split(delim);
		long sCnt = 0;
		for(String s : sentences){
			if(s.contains(delim2)){
				String[] temp = s.split(delim2);
				for(String t : temp){
					if(textIsSentence(t) == true){ //textIsSentence checks that the string is not empty, that there are more than 4 words (arbitrary number for now) and the first letter is uppercasee
						sCnt ++;
					}
				}
			}else{
				if(textIsSentence(s) == true){
					sCnt ++;
				}
			}
		}		
		return sCnt;
	}

I'm wondering if there is a better way to do this. With regex prehaps. But I'm having trouble figuring out how to write the pattern.

What it needs to find is:
period, question mark or exclamation point, followed by either a space or a new line. Or just a new line.

Thanks

[ComputerJy]

I hope this helps

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.util.Scanner;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class Test
{
	private static final String lineSeparator = System.getProperty("line.separator");

	public static void main(final String[] args)
	{
		final File f = new File("test.txt");
		try
		{
			final String paragraph = Test.readFileString(f);
			final Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[\\.\\!\\?]\\s+", Pattern.MULTILINE);
			final int value = p.split(paragraph).length;
			System.out.println("Number Of Sentences: " + value);
		}
		catch (final FileNotFoundException e)
		{
			System.err.println("File \"Test.txt\" Was not found");
		}

	}

	private static String readFileString(final File file) throws FileNotFoundException
	{
		final Scanner scanner = new Scanner(file);
		final StringBuilder sBuilder = new StringBuilder();
		while (scanner.hasNextLine())
			sBuilder.append(scanner.nextLine() + Test.lineSeparator);
		return sBuilder.toString();
	}
}

You might also want to take a look at class java.util.regex.Pattern

[mpdeglau]

Thanks, that worked. I knew it could be done with regex. For some reason I just can't grasp regex. It's usually pure luck if I can figure out the correct pattern to use, and that's always a simple pattern.

[leinad31]

Just bear in mind that you can only have per character selections as implemented by square bracket, e.g. [\\.\\!\\?] at char position you can have period, exclamation or question mark. You can't have character group selections, e.g. you want either aa or zz such as [(aa)(zz)]+ but that syntax is invalid. You'll need two patterns, one for aa and the other for zz.

[ComputerJy]

Just bear in mind that you can only have per character selections as implemented by square bracket, e.g. [\\.\\!\\?] at char position you can have period, exclamation or question mark. You can't have character group selections, e.g. you want either aa or zz such as [(aa)(zz)]+ but that syntax is invalid. You'll need two patterns, one for aa and the other for zz.

Are you a software engineer or something??