I have a java string 'str'
String str= " 1p qrn qr2 qst 1a1 4at qa qb1 st1 sp su";
I want to split it to get the following 'parts' array
String [] parts={"1p","qrn qr2 qst" ,"1a1 4at" ,"qa qb1" ,"st1 sp su"};
Elements of 'parts' start with char 0-9, a,q,s.
Help me for a suitabe regex such that:
String [] parts= str.split(a suitable regex);
or any other alternative which can do it.
This regex should work for you:
[\daqs][\w ]*?(?=\s{2}|$)
For splitting use this regex:
\s{2,}(?=[\daqs])
Java Code:
String [] parts = str.split("\\s{2,}(?=[\\daqs])");
System.out.println(Arrays.toString(parts));
With your string, this will work:
String[] yourArray = subjectString.split("^\\s+|\\s{2,}");
See the output at the bottom of the online demo.
How does this work?
It looks like your tokens are separated by multiple places. This is what we will use to split: \s{2,}
In addition, we want to remove any spaces at the beginning of the string, so we add this to the split conditions: ^\s+
I wish I could comment instead of answer but unfortunately I can't so I have to just do an answer. What you said doesn't actually work - as if it started with those characters, it would end up as
String [] parts={"1p", "qrn", "qr2", "qst" ,"1a1", "4at" ,"qa", "qb1" ,"st1", "sp", "su"};
so to answer your actual question,
[0-9aqs]\w+
should work as you want. If that's not what you want, clarify how they are split, because how you split doesn't fit "Elements of 'parts' start with char 0-9, a,q,s."
