regular expression that extracts words from a string

Question

I want to extract all words from a java String.

word can be written in any european language, and does not contain spaces, only alpha symbols.

it can contain hyphens though.

Answer 1

If you aren't tied to regular expressions, also have a look at BreakIterator, in particular the getWordInstance() method:

Word boundary analysis is used by search and replace functions, as well as within text editing applications that allow the user to select words with a double click. Word selection provides correct interpretation of punctuation marks within and following words. Characters that are not part of a word, such as symbols or punctuation marks, have word-breaks on both sides.