segmenter

Work with grapheme, words, and sentences with small, simple, and fast API using Intl.Segmenter

Install

npm install segmenter

Why

• Intl.Segmenter is supported in all major browsers and 94% of users have it available — it's time for adoption.
• If you have a use case other than iterating over all graphemes/words/sentences in a text, then Intl.Segmenter might be a little hard to work with.
• In many cases, working with graphemes is preferable to characters. Graphemes are what the end user sees. For example, the emoji 👨‍🔧️ is a single grapheme but consists of 6 characters. for loop will make 6 iterations, for of looping 👨‍🔧️ will make 4 iterations — it's confusing, just use graphemes.
• Before Intl.Segmenter, working with graphemes required libraries like graphemer that is 94KB in size.

Usage

import { graphemeAt, graphemeRangeAt, wordAt, wordRangeAt } from "segmenter";

graphemeAt("👨‍🔧️ the fixer", 3); // 👨‍🔧️

graphemeRangeAt("👨‍🔧️ the fixer", 3); // { start: 0, end: 6 }

wordAt("hello-world"); // "hello"

wordRangeAt("hello-world"); // { start: 0, end: 5 }

API

Graphemes

graphemeAt(string: string, position: number): string | undefined

Get the grapheme at position in string. Returns undefined if position is out of bounds or string is empty.

graphemeRangeAt(string: string, position: number): { start: number; end: number; } | undefined

Get the start and end positions of the grapheme at position in string. Returns undefined if position is out of bounds or string is empty.

graphemes(string: string): string[]

Get all graphemes in the string as Array.

Words

wordAt(string: string, position: number): string | undefined

Get the word at position in string. Returns undefined if position is out of bounds or string is empty.

wordRangeAt(string: string, position: number): { start: number; end: number; } | undefined

Get the start and end positions of the word at position in string. Returns undefined if position is out of bounds or string is empty.

words(string: string): string[]

Get all words in the string as Array.

Sentences

Note: Intl.Segmenter doesn't do a perfect job of detecting sentences. For example, I went to Dr. Smith's office will be split into two sentences.

sentenceAt(string: string, position: number): string | undefined

Get the sentence at position in string. Returns undefined if position is out of bounds or string is empty.

sentenceRangeAt(string: string, position: number): { start: number; end: number; } | undefined

Get the start and end positions of the sentence at position in string. Returns undefined if position is out of bounds or string is empty.

sentences(string: string): string[]

Get all sentences in the string as Array.