Split a string into several substrings using regex. Both matches and non-matches should be returned

Question

I would like to split a string into several substrings, and I think using regular expressions could help me.

I want this:        To become this:
<choice1>           {<choice1>}
c<hoi>ce2           {c, <hoi>, ce2}
<ch><oi><ce>3       {<ch>, <oi>, <ce>, 3}
choice4             {choice4}

Note that the curly brackets and comma's are just a visual aid. It doesn't really matter what the final form is, just that the values are seperately accessible/replacable.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

This code should work:

String str = "<ch><oi><ce>3";
Pattern p = Pattern.compile("<[^>]*>|\\w+");
Matcher m = p.matcher(str);
while(m.find())
    System.out.printf("=> %s%n", m.group());

OUTPUT:

=> <ch>
=> <oi>
=> <ce>
=> 3

Answer 2

With split

input.split("(?<!^)(?=<)|(?<=>)(?!$)");

---

Though I would match them

Matcher m=Pattern.compile("<[^>]*>|[^<>]+").matcher(input);
while(m.find())
{
     m.group();//matched value
}