Match exact phrase within a string in Python

Question

I\'m trying to determine whether a substring is in a string. The issue I\'m running into is that I don\'t want my function to return True if the substring is found within an

Answer 1

Since your phrase can have multiple words, doing a simple split and intersect won't work. I'd go with regex for this one:

import re

def is_phrase_in(phrase, text):
    return re.search(r"\b{}\b".format(phrase), text, re.IGNORECASE) is not None

phrase = "Purple cow"

print(is_phrase_in(phrase, "Purple cows make the best pets!"))   # False
print(is_phrase_in(phrase, "Your purple cow trampled my hedge!"))  # True