check an array for characters

Question

I have got a method that reads a file, puts each word into an array of strings and then adds each word to a tree. I want to modify it so that the word is not added to the tree if it contains NON English characters eg spanish etc. I though about the 'contains' method but it doesn't work on the array of type String. How would i do it ?

    public void parse(File f) throws Exception {

    Node root = new  Node('+'); //create a root node
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(f)));

    String line;
    while((line = br.readLine())!=null){
        String[] words = line.toLowerCase().split(" ");

        for(int i = 0; i < words.length; i++){
            addToTree(words[i], root);
        }
    }//end of while

Answer 1

You can use regex for that:

Pattern nonEng = Pattern.compile("[^A-Za-z]");
...
for(int i = 0; i < words.length; i++) {
    if (!pattern.matcher(words[i]).find()) {
        addToTree(words[i], root);
    }
}

This would throw away all words that are not composed entirely of English characters.

Answer 2

if words are composed of letters from [a-zA-Z_0-9]

return !myString.matches("^\\w+$");

if you have special requirements like punctuation marks and other characters, add them as well in the regex. [^\w.,;:'"]