Using the sentPosDetect method

The SentenceDetectorME class possesses a sentPosDetect method that returns Span objects for each sentence. Use the same code as found in the previous section, except for two changes: replace the sentDetect method with the sentPosDetect method, and the for-each statement with the method used here:

Span spans[] = detector.sentPosDetect(paragraph); 
for (Span span : spans) { 
    System.out.println(span); 
} 

The output that follows uses the original paragraph. The Span objects contain positional information returned from the default execution of the toString method:

    [0..74)
    [75..116)
    [117..145)
    [146..317)  

The Span class possesses a number of methods. The following code sequence demonstrates the use of the getStart and getEnd methods to clearly show the text represented by those spans:

for (Span span : spans) { 
    System.out.println(span + "[" + paragraph.substring( 
        span.getStart(), span.getEnd()) +"]"); 
} 

The output shows the sentences identified:

     [0..74)[When determining the end of sentences we need to consider several factors.]
    [75..116)[Sentences may end with exclamation marks!]
    [117..145)[Or possibly questions marks?]
    [146..317)[Within sentences we may find numbers like 3.14159, abbreviations such as found in Mr. Smith, and possibly ellipses either within a sentence ..., or at the end of a sentence...]

There are a number of other Span methods that can be valuable. These are listed in the following table:

Method	Meaning
contains	An overloaded method that determines whether another Span object or index is contained with the target
crosses	Determines whether two spans overlap
length	The length of the span
startsWith	Determines whether the span starts the target span