Match a word using regex that also handles apostrophes

Question

I have to separate a line of text into words, and am confused on what regex to use. I have looked everywhere for a regex that matches a word and found ones similar to this

Answer 1

Using answer from WhirlWind on the page stated in my comment you can do the following:

String candidate = "I \n"+
    "like \n"+
    "to "+
    "eat "+
    "but "+
    "I "+
    "don't "+
    "like "+
    "to "+
    "eat "+
    "everyone's "+
    "food "+
    "''  ''''  '.' ' "+
    "or "+
    "they'll "+
    "starv'e'";

String regex = "('\\w+)|(\\w+'\\w+)|(\\w+')|(\\w+)";
Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile(regex).matcher(candidate);
while (matcher.find()) {
  System.out.println("> matched: `" + matcher.group() + "`");
}

It will print:

> matched: `I`
> matched: `like`
> matched: `to`
> matched: `eat`
> matched: `but`
> matched: `I`
> matched: `don't`
> matched: `like`
> matched: `to`
> matched: `eat`
> matched: `everyone's`
> matched: `food`
> matched: `or`
> matched: `they'll`
> matched: `starv'e`

You can find a running example here: http://ideone.com/pVOmSK