Say I have an array of words, for example: (hi|ll|this|that|etc) and I want to find it in the following text:

Hi, I'll match this and ll too

I'm using: \\b(hi|ll|this|that|etc)\\b

But I want to only match whole words, excluding words found in contractions. Basically treat apostrophes as another "word seperator". In this case, it shouldn't match the "ll" in "I'll".

Ideas?

Say I have an array of words, for example: (hi|ll|this|that|etc) and I want to find it in the following text:

Hi, I'll match this and ll too

I'm using: \\b(hi|ll|this|that|etc)\\b

But I want to only match whole words, excluding words found in contractions. Basically treat apostrophes as another "word seperator". In this case, it shouldn't match the "ll" in "I'll".

Ideas?

• javascript
• regex

• Maybe (?:[^']|^)(hi|ll|this|that|etc)\b: regex101./r/gD7aC0/1 – user4227915 Commented Oct 29, 2015 at 2:19

2 Answers 2

If you want match just words you can try with:

(?:^|(?=[^']).\b)(hi|ll|th(?:is|at)|etc)\b

DEMO

and get words with group 1. However the \b will still allow to match fragments like: -this or @ll. I don't know is it desired result.

Use the apostrophe in addition to \b to begin and end a match:

(?:\b|')(hi|ll|this|that|etc)(?:\b|')

(?:...) means a non-capturing group. Stub on Regex101