How to find full words only in string

Question

How to find full words only in string

Answer 1

Just split up the string:

$words = explode(' ',$str);
if (in_array($search,$words)){
    echo "FOUND!";
}

Or, if you need the location:

$words = explode(' ',$str);
$exists_at = array_search($seach,$words);
if ($exists_at){
   echo "Found at ".$exists_at." key in the \$word array";
}

EDITS:

In light of the pro-regex anti regex fight going on here, I must retract this answer and defer to the regex crowd, but I'm going to leave it up for historical record. I had always assumed that working with arrays was more efficient from a processing standpoint, but I decided to run some tests, and it turns out that my assumption was wrong. The result of a single word test:

Time to search for word 10000 times using in_array(): 0.011814

Time to search for word 10000 times using preg_match(): 0.001697

The code I used to test (which presumes that explode will be used each time):

$str ="By ILI LIKUALAYANA MOKHTAKUALAR AND G. SURACH Datuk Dr Hasan Ali says he has no intention of joining Umno. Pic by Afendi Mohamed KUALA LUMPUR: FORMER Selangor Pas commissioner Datuk Dr Hasan Ali has not ruled out the possibility of returning to Pas' fold";
$search ="KUALA";

$start = microtime(true);
for($i=0;$i<1000;$i++){
    $words = explode(' ',$str);
    if (in_array($search,$words)){
        //
    }

}

$end = microtime();

$total = $end-$start;
echo "Time to search for word 10000 times using in_array(): ";
echo $total;

echo "
";

$start = microtime(true);
for($i=0;$i<1000;$i++){
    if (preg_match("/\b$search\b/", $str)) {
        // word found
    }
}

$end = microtime();

$total = $end-$start;
echo "Time to search for word 10000 times using preg_match(): ";
echo $total;

So conclusion: go with preg_match("/\b$search\b/", $str)