I've a function to split text on punctuation and leave the rest of the string (including whitespace in other items of the list):

import unicodedata

def split_on_punc(text):
    chars = list(text)
    i = 0
    start_new_word = True
    output = []
    while i < len(chars):
        char = chars[i]
        if is_punctuation(char):
            output.append([char])
            start_new_word = True
        else:
            if start_new_word:
                output.append([])
            start_new_word = False
            output[-1].append(char)
        i += 1
    ##print(output)
    return ["".join(x) for x in output]

def is_punctuation(char):
    return True if unicodedata.category(char).startswith("P") else False

E.g.

split_on_punctuation("This, this a sentence. with lotsa' puncts!?@ hahaha looo world")

[out]:

['This',
 ',',
 ' this a sentence',
 '.',
 ' with lotsa',
 "'",
 ' puncts',
 '!',
 '?',
 '@',
 ' hahaha looo world']

It looks like a very complicated way to check through each character and then keep track of whether it's a start of a new word or not.

Is there a better (faster/simpler) way to achieve the same output?

I've a function to split text on punctuation and leave the rest of the string (including whitespace in other items of the list):

import unicodedata

def split_on_punc(text):
    chars = list(text)
    i = 0
    start_new_word = True
    output = []
    while i < len(chars):
        char = chars[i]
        if is_punctuation(char):
            output.append([char])
            start_new_word = True
        else:
            if start_new_word:
                output.append([])
            start_new_word = False
            output[-1].append(char)
        i += 1
    ##print(output)
    return ["".join(x) for x in output]

def is_punctuation(char):
    return True if unicodedata.category(char).startswith("P") else False

E.g.

split_on_punctuation("This, this a sentence. with lotsa' puncts!?@ hahaha looo world")

[out]:

['This',
 ',',
 ' this a sentence',
 '.',
 ' with lotsa',
 "'",
 ' puncts',
 '!',
 '?',
 '@',
 ' hahaha looo world']

It looks like a very complicated way to check through each character and then keep track of whether it's a start of a new word or not.

I'm looking for improvements in speed and simplicity.