Javascript - regexp - find words from array in string, whole words only.

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Hi,
I have to build a RegExp obejct, that will search words from an array,
and will find only whole words match.

e.g.
I have a words array ('a','b','c'),
and I want the RegExp to find 'a' or 'b' or 'c', but not 'aaa'.

How should I build my RegExp?
Thanks in advance!

What I have tried:

I tried this code:

JavaScript

new RegExp('(word1|word2|word3)','g');

It works well, but it find also words like "word11111", I have to match only the whole words.

Posted 11-Jan-17 7:38am

Member 11736781

Updated 11-Jan-17 22:33pm

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2 solutions

Solution 1

Try:

JavaScript

new RegExp('\\b(word1|word2|word3)\\b','g');

\b is a word boundary[^] so now your regex will only match full words.

To create this from an array with words:

JavaScript

var words = [ "word1", "word2", "word3" ];
var regex = new RegExp('\\b(' + words.join('|') + ')\\b', 'g');

Posted 11-Jan-17 7:46am

Thomas Daniels

Comments

Member 11736781 12-Jan-17 3:12am

Thank you very much for your repley!
When I use:
var regex = new RegExp('(' + words.join('|') + ')', 'g');
The regex find also partial words,
but when I use:
var regex = new RegExp('\\b(' + words.join('|') + ')\\b', 'g');
The regex doesn't find any word :-(

Member 11736781 12-Jan-17 3:43am

Now I see that with english characters the code works well, but not with hebrews characters.

Thomas Daniels 12-Jan-17 10:15am

I see. Can't help with that, sorry! But I'm glad to hear that you found a solution yourself.

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Member 11736781 · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-11T22:33:00

Solution 2

The solution was to use XRegExp:

var re = XRegExp('(^|[^_0-9\\pL])(' + matchWords.join('|') + ')(?![_0-9\\pL])','ig');
text = XRegExp.replace(text.replace(/\n$/g, '\n\n'), re, '$1<mark>$2</mark>');

Posted 11-Jan-17 22:33pm

Member 11736781