How to make word boundary \b not match on dashes

Question

I simplified my code to the specific problem I am having.

import re
pattern = re.compile(r\'\\bword\\b\')
result = pattern.sub(lambda x: \"match\", \"-word-          


        

Answer 1

\b basically denotes a word boundary on characters other than [a-zA-Z0-9_] which includes spaces as well. Surround word with negative lookarounds to ensure there is no non-space character after and before it:

re.compile(r'(?