Posted by Heiko Richler on 02/28/07 10:29

Kris wrote:
> I have a text and I want to match several words like this "(controller|
> data|IT)?" at least one of the words in the group should be mandatory,
> but I dont want to match a word that is part of another word like this
> "datamanager" it should only match the word "data" or any other word
> in the group.
>
> Any suggestions?

You know there are classes for characters, like \w? Well there are
classes for non characters:
^ Start of Line or Data
$ End of Line or Data
\b Word-boundery, change from \w to \W

-> "(\b(controller|data|IT)\b)?"

But some letters like German umlaute may be seen as Non-Word-Elements,
depending on your the encoding.

In this cases you may try search for your words between non letters.
-> "((\s|^)(controller|data|IT)(\s|$))?"

what about data-base?

Heiko
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