Index of word in a String

Question

How can I find the index of a word in a String?
E.g.
String a = "This is a book";
In this the index of word "is" is 5 not 2.
A word is a sequence of char separated from other char sequences by a one of " \t\n\r\f", i.e. the default StringTokenized delimiters.
Regards,
Lokesh

Answer 1

Yes something like this.
This is how I solved it
  private static final String WORD_DELIM = " \t\n\r\f,.;:";
  private int getIndexOfWord(String str, String text) {
    StringTokenizer tokenizer     = new StringTokenizer(str, WORD_DELIM, true);
    String token;
    StringBuffer previousContents = new StringBuffer();
    while(tokenizer.hasMoreTokens()) {
      token = tokenizer.nextToken();
      if(startsWithWord(text, token)) {
        break;
      previousContents.append(token);
    if(previousContents.length() == 0) {
      return -1;
    } else {
      return previousContents.length();
  private boolean startsWithWord(String word, String token) {
    //The token must start with "word"
    if(!token.startsWith(word)) {
      return false;
    //Now rplace all delimiters by blanks
    int delimCount = WORD_DELIM.length();
    char c;
    for(int i = delimCount - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
      c     = WORD_DELIM.charAt(i);
      token = token.replace(c, ' ');
    //Finally get rid of the blanks.
    token = token.trim();
    if(token.equals(word)) {
      return true;
    return false;