How can I extract specific terms from each string line?

Question

I have a serious problem with extracting terms from each string line. To be more specific, I have one csv formatted file which is actually not csv format (it saves all terms into line[0] only)

So, here's just example string line among thousands of string lines;

---

test.csv

line1 : "31451 　　 CID005319044 　　15939353　　 C8H14O3S2 　　　beta-lipoic acid　　 C1CS@S[C@@H]1CCCCC(=O)O "

line2 : "12232 COD05374044 23439353　　C924O3S2 　　　saponin　　 CCCC(=O)O "

line3 : "9048 　 CTD042032　23241　　C3HO4O3S2　Berberine　 [C@@H]1CCCCC(=O)O "

---

I want to extract "beta-lipoic acid" ,"saponin" and "Berberine" only which is located in 5th position. You can see there are big spaces between terms, so that's why I said 5th position.

In this case, how can I extract terms located in 5th position for each line?

one more thing ;

the length of whitespace between each six terms is not always equal. the length could be one,two,three or four..five... something like that..

Answer 1

Another try:

import java.io.File;
import java.util.Scanner;

public class HelloWorld {
    // The amount of columns per row, where each column is seperated by an arbitrary number
    //  of spaces or tabs
    final static int COLS = 7;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Tokens:");
        try (Scanner scanner = new Scanner(new File("input.txt")).useDelimiter("\\s+")) {
            // Counten the current column-id
            int n = 0;
            String tmp = "";
            StringBuilder item = new StringBuilder();
            // Operating of a stream
            while (scanner.hasNext()) {
                tmp = scanner.next();
                n += 1;
                // If we have reached the fifth column, take its content and append the
                // sixth column too, as the name we want consists of space-separated
                // expressions. Feel free to customize of your name-layout varies.
                if (n % COLS == 5) {
                    item.setLength(0);
                    item.append(tmp);
                    item.append(" ");
                    item.append(scanner.next());
                    n += 1;

                    System.out.println(item.toString()); // Doing  some stuff with that
                                                         //expression we got
                }
            }
        }
        catch(java.io.IOException e){
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

if your line[]'s type is String

String s = line[0];
String[] split = s.split("   ");
return split[4]; //which is the fifth item

For the delimiter, if you want to go more precisely, you can use regular expression.

Answer 3

How is the column separated? For example, if the columns are separated by tab character, I believe you can use the split method. Try using the below:

String[] parts = str.split("\\t");

Your expected result will be in parts[4].

Answer 4

Just use String.split() using a regex for at least 2 whitespace characters:

String foo = "31451 　　 CID005319044 　　15939353　　 C8H14O3S2 　　　beta-lipoic acid　　 C1CS@S[C@@H]1CCCCC(=O)O";
String[] bar = foo.split("\\s\\s");
bar[4]; // beta-lipoic acid