13. The method of claim 10 , wherein said acts further comprise: maintaining a counter; including a value of said counter in each placeholder string to create a distinct placeholder string for each matching exception; and incrementing the value of said counter after each match.
10. A method of dividing natural language text into segments, the method comprising: using a processor to perform acts comprising: representing one or more sentence breaking rules in a first regular expression, wherein any sentence breaking rule that has both before and after patterns is included in said first regular expression as a positive lookbehind for the before pattern followed by a non-capture group for the after pattern, wherein any sentence break rule that has only a before pattern is included in said first regular expression as a positive lookbehind for the before pattern, and wherein any sentence breaking rule that has only an after pattern is included in said first regular expression as a positive lookahead for the after pattern; combining a plurality of exceptions to said one or more sentence breaking rules disjunctively into a second regular expression, said second regular expression being distinct from said first regular expression, wherein any exception that has both before and after patterns is included in said second regular expression as the before pattern followed by a non-capture group for the after pattern, and wherein any exception that has only an after pattern or a before pattern but not both is included in said second regular expression as the before or after pattern; finding first strings in said natural language text that match said second regular expression; replacing said first strings with placeholders to create a second string, wherein said second string comprises said natural language text but with said placeholders in place of said first strings; subsequent to said finding and said replacing, using said first regular expression to detect sentence break points in said second string; and subsequent to detecting said sentence break points, replacing said placeholders in said second string with said first strings.