Latin Regex with symbols

Question

I need split a text and get only words, numbers and hyphenated composed-words. I need to get latin words also, then I used \p{L}, which gives me é, ú ü ã, and so forth. The example is:

String myText = "Some latin text with symbols, ? 987 (A la pointe sud-est de l'île se dresse la cathédrale Notre-Dame qui fut lors de son achèvement en 1330 l'une des plus grandes cathédrales d'occident) : ! @ # $ % ^& * ( ) + - _ #$% "  ' : ; > < / \  | ,  here some is wrong… * + () e -"

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("[^\\p{L}+(\\-\\p{L}+)*\\d]+");
String words[] = pattern.split( myText );

What is wrong with this regex? Why it matches symbols like "(", "+", "-", "*" and "|"?

Some of results are:

dresse     // OK
sud-est    // OK
occident)  // WRONG
987        // OK
()         // WRONG
(a         // WRONG
*          // WRONG
-          // WRONG
+          // WRONG
(          // WRONG
|          // WRONG

The regex explanation is:

[^\p{L}+(\-\p{L}+)*\d]+

 * Word separator will be:
 *     [^  ...  ]  No sequence in:
 *     \p{L}+        Any latin letter
 *     (\-\p{L}+)*   Optionally hyphenated
 *     \d            or numbers
 *     [ ... ]+      once or more.

Answer 1

If my understanding of your requirement is correct, this regex will match what you want:

"\\p{IsLatin}+(?:-\\p{IsLatin}+)*|\\d+"

It will match:

• A contiguous sequence of Unicode Latin script characters. I restrict it to Latin script, since \p{L} will match letter in any script. Change \\p{IsLatin} to \\pL if your version of Java doesn't support the syntax.
• Or several such sequences, hyphenated
• Or a contiguous sequence of decimal digits (0-9)

The regex above is to be used by calling Pattern.compile, and call matcher(String input) to obtain a Matcher object, and use a loop to find matches.

Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("\\p{IsLatin}+(?:-\\p{IsLatin}+)*|\\d+");
Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(inputString);

while (matcher.find()) {
    System.out.println(matcher.group());
}

If you want to allow words with apostrophe ':

"\\p{IsLatin}+(?:['\\-]\\p{IsLatin}+)*|\\d+"

I also escape - in the character class ['\\-] just in case you want to add more. Actually - doesn't need escaping if it is the first or last in the character class, but I escape it anyway just to be safe.