# Split a sentence by regular expression

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/split-a-sentence-by-regular-expression/135922>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [April 26, 2008, 11:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/split-a-sentence-by-regular-expression/135922 "2008-04-26T11:00:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pranjal\_jain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ac91a4/32.png) [@pranjal\_jain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pranjal_jain)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2008, 11:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/split-a-sentence-by-regular-expression/135922/1 "2008-04-26T11:00:53Z")

</div>

Hi  
I want to split a sentence by means of regular expression.  
For example, the sentence is  
" Hello how r u?"

How can i split this ?

the way I used is as follows :

"

matching = Array.new  
a = gets  
puts a.split.length

re = /((\w+)\s)+/  
matching = re.match(a)  
i = 1  
until i \>a.split.length

puts i  
puts matching[i]  
#~ if (matching[i] == “u”)  
#~ puts “Who is Anant?”  
#~ end  
i +=1

end

"

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pranjal\_jain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/ac91a4/32.png) [@pranjal\_jain](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pranjal_jain)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2008, 11:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/split-a-sentence-by-regular-expression/135922/2 "2008-04-26T11:07:28Z")

</div>

What does “split a sentence” mean? If it’s just split around spaces,  
you could simply do

" Hello how r u?".split(’ ')

or

" Hello how r u?".split(/\s+/)

if you want to remove empty words (i.e. ""s) you could do something like

" Hello how r u?".split(/\s+/).reject{|w| w == “”}

Does this answer your question?

Cheers,  
Peter

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