By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: May 15, 2020
As a brief note today, here’s the source code for a little Scala function that gets the first paragraph of text from a string. Paragraphs are assumed to be separated by \n\n
characters. Also, if that character sequence isn’t found, the input text is assumed to be one paragraph. Here’s the source code:
def getFirstParagraph(text: String): String = {
// get the index of the first `\n\n` and then get
// the text leading up to that position
val paragraphSeparatorIdx = text.indexOf("\n\n")
val subText = if (paragraphSeparatorIdx > 0) {
text.substring(0, paragraphSeparatorIdx)
} else {
text
}
subText
}
As usual, the code can be shortened, but I write it out fully to make it easier to understand.
Feel free to use this code in your own projects, with the caveat being that I haven’t tested it yet. It looks correct and works on simple examples, but ...