CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
Ben Simpson
Ben Simpson

Reputation: 427

Regular expression - finding full words that contain a specific string

I am trying to match the 'words' that contain a specific string inside a provided string.

This reg_ex works great:

preg_match('/\b(\w*form\w*)\b/', $string, $matches);

So for example if my string contained: "Which person has reformed or performed" it returns reformed and performed.

However, I need to match codes inside codes so my definition of 'word' is based on splitting the string purely by a space.

For example, I have a string like:

Test MFC-123/Ben MFC/7474

And I need to match 'MFC' which should return 'MFC-123/Ben' and 'MFC/7474'.

How can I modify the above reg_ex to match all characters and use space as a boundary.

Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 73

Answers (2)

Ammar
Ammar

Reputation: 1314

If you want to get the whole block of text which does not contain space and contain your MFC as a match you can use the following regex:

\b(\S*MFC\S+)\b

explanation:

    \b assert position at a word boundary (^\w|\w$|\W\w|\w\W)
    1st Capturing group (\S*MFC\S+)
    \S* match any non-white space character [^\r\n\t\f ]
        Quantifier: Between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed.
    MFC matches the characters MFC literally (case sensitive)
    \S+ match any non-white space character [^\r\n\t\f ]
        Quantifier: Between one and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed.
    \b assert position at a word boundary (^\w|\w$|\W\w|\w\W)

example where matched blocks are in bold:

Test MFC-123/Ben jbas2/jda lmasdlmasd;mwrsMFCkmasd j2\13 MFC/7474

hope this helps.

Upvotes: 1

Sabuj Hassan
Sabuj Hassan

Reputation: 39443

Simply using this will do it for you:

(MFC\S+)

It means any non whitespace character after the MFC

If the MFC comes in between text, or alone, then you can place \S* before and after the MFC`. For example

(\S*MFC\S*)

This matches:

MFC-12312
1231-MFC
MFC

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions