Parsing text, but keeping punctuation

Question

I'm using this little piece of code to go through some inputted text and extracting sentences separated by the markers:

NSCharacterSet *punctuation =
[NSCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@".!?\n"];
NSArray *parts = [data componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:punctuation];

The issue is that the resulting array is stripped from the punctuation. How do i go about storing the data with the appropriate punctuation? If possible, i'd like keep sentences marked with a newline (\n) as they are.

For example, if I enter this:

This is a sentence. It is marked by a period. This sentence is not marked by one How do you do? I'm doing very good!

I'd like to get something like this:

This is a sentence.
It is marked by a period.
This sentence is not marked by one
How do you do?
I'm doing very good!

This works in Java, take a look: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5553410/regular-expression-match-a-sentence — Sanandrea, Nov 29 '13 at 09:44

Yogi · Answer 1 · 2013-11-29T11:53:24.150

1

You can use [NSString stringByReplacingOccurencesOfString: ByString:] instead.

e.g [NSString stringByReplacingOccurencesOfString:@"." ByString:@".\n"];

and similar for other symbols.

edited Nov 29 '13 at 11:53

answered Nov 29 '13 at 09:38

Yogi

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score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 29 '13 at 09:48

Hope this helps:

NSString *string = @"This is a sentence. It is marked by a period. This sentence is not marked by one How do you do? I'm doing very good!";
NSError *error = nil;
NSString *pattern = @"(\\.|,|!|\\?|\\n)\\s*";
NSRegularExpression *expression = [NSRegularExpression regularExpressionWithPattern:pattern
                                                                            options:0
                                                                              error:&error];
if (expression)
{
    NSArray *matches = [expression matchesInString:string
                                           options:0
                                             range:NSMakeRange(0, [string length])];
    NSLog(@"%@", matches);
    if ([matches count] > 0)
    {
        NSMutableArray *sentences = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:[matches count]];
        NSUInteger sentenceStart = 0;
        for (NSTextCheckingResult *result in matches)
        {
            NSUInteger sentenceEnd = result.range.location + 1;
            [sentences addObject:[string substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(sentenceStart, sentenceEnd - sentenceStart)]];
            sentenceStart = sentenceEnd + (result.range.length - 1);
        }
        NSLog(@"%@", sentences);
    }
}
else
{
    NSLog(@"ERROR: %@", error);
}

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 29 '13 at 09:50

Yogi's answer will do for inserting newlines. However, if you want to put the string parts in an array, you can use this workaround:

data = [data stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"." withString:@".&§"];
data = [data stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"!" withString:@"!&§"];
data = [data stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:@"?" withString:@"?&§"];
NSArray *parts = [data componentsSeparatedByString:@"&§"];

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 29 '13 at 09:56

    NSString *yourString = @"This is a sentence. It is marked by a period. This sentence is not marked by one How do you do? I'm doing very good!";
    NSMutableCharacterSet *punctuation = [NSMutableCharacterSet characterSetWithCharactersInString:@".!?\n"];
   [punctuation formUnionWithCharacterSet:[NSCharacterSet punctuationCharacterSet]];
    NSMutableArray *words = [[yourString componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:punctuation] mutableCopy];

Hope this will help you......

This doesn't accomplish what i'm trying to do. – Malfunction Nov 29 '13 at 10:25 — Malfunction, Nov 29 '13 at 10:25

Parsing text, but keeping punctuation

4 Answers4