Java Doc for BreakIterator.java in  » Internationalization-Localization » icu4j » com » ibm » icu » text » Java Source Code / Java DocumentationJava Source Code and Java Documentation

• getTitleInstance() returns a BreakIterator that locates boundaries between title breaks.
• getSentenceInstance() returns a BreakIterator that locates boundaries between sentences. This is useful for triple-click selection, for example.
• getWordInstance() returns a BreakIterator that locates boundaries between words. This is useful for double-click selection or "find whole words" searches. This type of BreakIterator makes sure there is a boundary position at the beginning and end of each legal word. (Numbers count as words, too.) Whitespace and punctuation are kept separate from real words.
• getLineInstance() returns a BreakIterator that locates positions where it is legal for a text editor to wrap lines. This is similar to word breaking, but not the same: punctuation and whitespace are generally kept with words (you don't want a line to start with whitespace, for example), and some special characters can force a position to be considered a line-break position or prevent a position from being a line-break position.
• getCharacterInstance() returns a BreakIterator that locates boundaries between logical characters. Because of the structure of the Unicode encoding, a logical character may be stored internally as more than one Unicode code point. (A with an umlaut may be stored as an a followed by a separate combining umlaut character, for example, but the user still thinks of it as one character.) This iterator allows various processes (especially text editors) to treat as characters the units of text that a user would think of as characters, rather than the units of text that the computer sees as "characters".

• The beginning and end of the text are always treated as boundary positions.
• The current position of the iterator is always a boundary position (random- access methods move the iterator to the nearest boundary position before or after the specified position, not _to_ the specified position).
• DONE is used as a flag to indicate when iteration has stopped. DONE is only returned when the current position is the end of the text and the user calls next(), or when the current position is the beginning of the text and the user calls previous().
• Break positions are numbered by the positions of the characters that follow them. Thus, under normal circumstances, the position before the first character is 0, the position after the first character is 1, and the position after the last character is 1 plus the length of the string.
• The client can change the position of an iterator, or the text it analyzes, at will, but cannot change the behavior. If the user wants different behavior, he must instantiate a new iterator.

Examples:

Creating and using text boundaries

 public static void main(String args[]) {
 if (args.length == 1) {
 String stringToExamine = args[0];
 //print each word in order
 BreakIterator boundary = BreakIterator.getWordInstance();
 boundary.setText(stringToExamine);
 printEachForward(boundary, stringToExamine);
 //print each sentence in reverse order
 boundary = BreakIterator.getSentenceInstance(Locale.US);
 boundary.setText(stringToExamine);
 printEachBackward(boundary, stringToExamine);
 printFirst(boundary, stringToExamine);
 printLast(boundary, stringToExamine);
 }
 }
 

 public static void printEachForward(BreakIterator boundary, String source) {
 int start = boundary.first();
 for (int end = boundary.next();
 end != BreakIterator.DONE;
 start = end, end = boundary.next()) {
 System.out.println(source.substring(start,end));
 }
 }
 

 public static void printEachBackward(BreakIterator boundary, String source) {
 int end = boundary.last();
 for (int start = boundary.previous();
 start != BreakIterator.DONE;
 end = start, start = boundary.previous()) {
 System.out.println(source.substring(start,end));
 }
 }
 

 public static void printFirst(BreakIterator boundary, String source) {
 int start = boundary.first();
 int end = boundary.next();
 System.out.println(source.substring(start,end));
 }
 

 public static void printLast(BreakIterator boundary, String source) {
 int end = boundary.last();
 int start = boundary.previous();
 System.out.println(source.substring(start,end));
 }
 

 public static void printAt(BreakIterator boundary, int pos, String source) {
 int end = boundary.following(pos);
 int start = boundary.previous();
 System.out.println(source.substring(start,end));
 }
 

 public static int nextWordStartAfter(int pos, String text) {
 BreakIterator wb = BreakIterator.getWordInstance();
 wb.setText(text);
 int last = wb.following(pos);
 int current = wb.next();
 while (current != BreakIterator.DONE) {
 for (int p = last; p < current; p++) {
 if (Character.isLetter(text.charAt(p))
 return last;
 }
 last = current;
 current = wb.next();
 }
 return BreakIterator.DONE;
 }
 

(The iterator returned by BreakIterator.getWordInstance() is unique in that the break positions it returns don't represent both the start and end of the thing being iterated over. That is, a sentence-break iterator returns breaks that each represent the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. With the word-break iterator, the characters between two boundaries might be a word, or they might be the punctuation or whitespace between two words. The above code uses a simple heuristic to determine which boundary is the beginning of a word: If the characters between this boundary and the next boundary include at least one letter (this can be an alphabetical letter, a CJK ideograph, a Hangul syllable, a Kana character, etc.), then the text between this boundary and the next is a word; otherwise, it's the material between words.)

Note: This method will be implemented in ICU 3.0; ICU 2.8 contains a partial preview implementation. The * actual locale is returned correctly, but the valid locale is not, in most cases.
Parameters:
  type - type of information requested, either com.ibm.icu.util.ULocale.VALID_LOCALE or com.ibm.icu.util.ULocale.ACTUAL_LOCALE. the information specified by type, or null ifthis object was not constructed from locale data.
See Also:   com.ibm.icu.util.ULocale
See Also:   com.ibm.icu.util.ULocale.VALID_LOCALE
See Also:   com.ibm.icu.util.ULocale.ACTUAL_LOCALE