Java RegEx: Split without losing token

Question

I'm trying to write regex that will split a string when there is whitespace followed by a negative sign followed by non whitespace.

Example:

"x -y".split(regex)
returns: String[]{"x","-y"};

Currently I'm using

(?<=\\s)-(?=\\S+)

for my regex; but this returns "x","y" and eats the negative sign. is there any way to not eat the negative sign?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You may include the minus in the second group

\\s(?=-\\S+)

This gives you the desired result.

Answer 2

Pattern:

\s(?=\-\S)

Example"

 String:  x -y z -x y z
Matches:   ^    ^

Carets point to matches

Demo:

Example Code