Problem with a regular expresion,for Scanner delimiter

Question

Hi,I'm having a problem I have a the following example text
This is a simple #test with #lots of #sharps and normal text just for #testing #a #regular expression.
also I have this regular expresion \\w*#\\w*
the problem is that this regular expression as a delimiter in a Scanner class will read/parse only the words that dont have a +#+ as first char, the problem is that i need the exact opposite , i need to parse/read only the words that have a +#+ as first char.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

What you're trying to do is the opposite of what a Scanner is usually used for, but that's okay, because Scanner provides methods for that, too: Scanner sc = new Scanner(yourFile);
String token = null;
while ((token = sc.findWithinHorizon("#\\w+", 0) != null)
  System.out.println(token);
} Passing zero as the second parameter means no horizon, i.e., find the next match no matter how far along it is. If you want to limit the search to the current line, you can use findInLine().