Match a word using regex that also handles apostrophes

Question

I have to separate a line of text into words, and am confused on what regex to use. I have looked everywhere for a regex that matches a word and found ones similar to this

Answer 1

The following regex seems to cover your sample string correctly. But it doesn't cover you scenario for the apostrophe.

[\s,.?!"]+

Java Code:

String input = "I like to eat but I don't like to eat everyone's food, or they'll starve.";
String[] inputWords = input.split("[\\s,.?!]+");

If I understand correctly, the apostrophe should be left alone as long as it is after a word character. This next regex should cover the above plus the special case for the apostrophe.

(?

Java Code:

String input = "I like to eat but I don't like to eat everyone's food, or they'll starve.";
String[] inputWords = input.split("(?

If I run the second regex on the string: Hey there! Don't eat 'the mystery meat'. I get the following words in my string array:

Hey
there
Don't
eat
the
mystery
meat'