Extracting each word from a String using Regex in Java
Last Updated :
23 Jul, 2025
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Given a string, extract words from it. "Words" are defined as contiguous strings of alphabetic characters i.e. any upper or lower case characters a-z or A-Z.
Examples:
Java
Output:
Input : Funny?? are not you? Output : Funny are not you Input : Geeks for geeks?? Output : Geeks for geeksWe have discussed a solution for C++ in this post : Program to extract words from a given String We have also discussed basic approach for java in these posts : Counting number of lines, words, characters and paragraphs in a text file using Java and Print first letter in word using Regex. In this post, we will discuss Regular Expression approach for doing the same. This approach is best in terms of Time Complexity and is also used for large input files. Below is the regular expression for any word.
[a-zA-Z]+
// Java program to demonstrate extracting words
// from string using Regex
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;
public class Test
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
String s1 = "Geeks for Geeks";
String s2 = "A Computer Science Portal for Geeks";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("[a-zA-Z]+");
Matcher m1 = p.matcher(s1);
Matcher m2 = p.matcher(s2);
System.out.println("Words from string \"" + s1 + "\" : ");
while (m1.find()) {
System.out.println(m1.group());
}
System.out.println("Words from string \"" + s2 + "\" : ");
while (m2.find()) {
System.out.println(m2.group());
}
}
}
Words from string "Geeks for Geeks" : Geeks for Geeks Words from string "A Computer Science Portal for Geeks" : A Computer Science Portal for Geeks