How to split a string, but also keep the delimiters?

Question

I have a multiline string which is delimited by a set of different delimiters:

(Text1)(DelimiterA)(Text2)(DelimiterC)(Text3)(DelimiterB)(Text4)

Answer 1

One of the subtleties in this question involves the "leading delimiter" question: if you are going to have a combined array of tokens and delimiters you have to know whether it starts with a token or a delimiter. You could of course just assume that a leading delim should be discarded but this seems an unjustified assumption. You might also want to know whether you have a trailing delim or not. This sets two boolean flags accordingly.

Written in Groovy but a Java version should be fairly obvious:

            String tokenRegex = /[\p{L}\p{N}]+/ // a String in Groovy, Unicode alphanumeric
            def finder = phraseForTokenising =~ tokenRegex
            // NB in Groovy the variable 'finder' is then of class java.util.regex.Matcher
            def finderIt = finder.iterator() // extra method added to Matcher by Groovy magic
            int start = 0
            boolean leadingDelim, trailingDelim
            def combinedTokensAndDelims = [] // create an array in Groovy

            while( finderIt.hasNext() )
            {
                def token = finderIt.next()
                int finderStart = finder.start()
                String delim = phraseForTokenising[ start  .. finderStart - 1 ]
                // Groovy: above gets slice of String/array
                if( start == 0 ) leadingDelim = finderStart != 0
                if( start > 0 || leadingDelim ) combinedTokensAndDelims << delim
                combinedTokensAndDelims << token // add element to end of array
                start = finder.end()
            }
            // start == 0 indicates no tokens found
            if( start > 0 ) {
                // finish by seeing whether there is a trailing delim
                trailingDelim = start < phraseForTokenising.length()
                if( trailingDelim ) combinedTokensAndDelims << phraseForTokenising[ start .. -1 ]

                println( "leading delim? $leadingDelim, trailing delim? $trailingDelim, combined array:\n $combinedTokensAndDelims" )

            }