How to split a string into words. Ex: “stringintowords” -> “String Into Words”?

Question

What is the right way to split a string into words ? (string doesn\'t contain any spaces or punctuation marks)

For example: \"stringintowords\" -> \"String Into Word

Answer 1

Let's assume that you have a function isWord(w), which checks if w is a word using a dictionary. Let's for simplicity also assume for now that you only want to know whether for some word w such a splitting is possible. This can be easily done with dynamic programming.

Let S[1..length(w)] be a table with Boolean entries. S[i] is true if the word w[1..i] can be split. Then set S[1] = isWord(w[1]) and for i=2 to length(w) calculate

S[i] = (isWord[w[1..i] or for any j in {2..i}: S[j-1] and isWord[j..i]).

This takes O(length(w)^2) time, if dictionary queries are constant time. To actually find the splitting, just store the winning split in each S[i] that is set to true. This can also be adapted to enumerate all solution by storing all such splits.