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

I was looking at the problem and thought maybe I could share how I did it. It's a little too hard to explain my algorithm in words so maybe I could share my optimized solution in pseudocode:

string mainword = "stringintowords";
array substrings = get_all_substrings(mainword);

/** this way, one does not check the dictionary to check for word validity 
 *  on every substring; It would only be queried once and for all, 
 *  eliminating multiple travels to the data storage
 */
string query = "select word from dictionary where word in " + substrings;
array validwords = execute(query).getArray();

validwords = validwords.sort(length, desc);

array segments = [];
while(mainword != ""){
    for(x = 0; x < validwords.length; x++){
        if(mainword.startswith(validwords[x])) {
            segments.push(validwords[x]);
            mainword = mainword.remove(v);
            x = 0;
        }
    }

    /**
     * remove the first character if any of valid words do not match, then start again
     * you may need to add the first character to the result if you want to
     */
    mainword = mainword.substring(1);
}

string result = segments.join(" ");