Strpos with exact matches

Question

I have a function in php which I would like to perform a simple search on a string, using a kw as the search phrase, and return true if found.

This is what I have no

Answer 1

You can use word boundaries \b:

if (preg_match("/\b".preg_quote($kw_to_search_for)."\b/i", $search_strings[$i])) {
    // found
}

For instance:

echo preg_match("/\bProfessional\b/i", 'Prof'); // 0
echo preg_match("/\bProf\b/i", 'Prof');         // 1

/i modifier makes it case insensitive.

Answer 2

In my case I needed to match exactly professional when professional.bowler existed in the sentence.

Where preg_match('/\bprofessional\b/i', 'Im a professional.bowler'); returned int(1).

To resolve this I resorted to arrays to find an exact word match using isset on the keys.

Detection Demo

$wordList = array_flip(explode(' ', 'Im a professional.bowler'));
var_dump(isset($wordList['professional'])); //false
var_dump(isset($wordList['professional.bowler'])); //true

---

The method also works for directory paths, such as when altering the php include_path, as opposed to using preg_replace which was my specific use-case.

Replacement Demo

$removePath = '/path/to/exist-not' ;
$includepath = '.' . PATH_SEPARATOR . '/path/to/exist-not' . PATH_SEPARATOR . '/path/to/exist';
$wordsPath = str_replace(PATH_SEPARATOR, ' ', $includepath);
$result = preg_replace('/\b' . preg_quote($removePath, '/'). '\b/i', '', $wordsPath);
var_dump(str_replace(' ', PATH_SEPARATOR, $result));
//".:/path/to/exist-not:/path/to/exist"

$paths = array_flip(explode(PATH_SEPARATOR, $includepath));
if(isset($paths[$removePath])){
    unset($paths[$removePath]);
}
$includepath = implode(PATH_SEPARATOR, array_flip($paths));
var_dump($includepath);
//".:/path/to/exist"