PCRE whole word match (only spaces allowed as separator)

Question

I want to match string as a whole word match "~\b$search\b~i", it matches '35' to '35-40'. I want only space to be separator between words.

Test cases: Matching 35 in following cases:

• 35-40 => false
• 3-5 => false
• 335 => false
• 350 => false
• 35 => true

Thanks for answers

Answer 1

You can use look-around assertions instead of word boundary assertions:

~(?<!\S)$search(?!\S)~i

Here (?<!\S) asserts that there is no non-whitespace character (\S) preceding and (?!\S) asserts that there is no non-whitespace character following $search.