match whole word only without regex

Question

Since i cant use preg_match (UTF8 support is somehow broken, it works locally but breaks at production) i want to find another way to match word against blacklist. Problem is, i

Answer 1

A simple way to use word boundaries with unicode properties:

preg_match('/(?:^|[^pL\pN_])(badword)(?:[^pL\pN_]|$)/u', $string);

In fact it's much more complicated, have a look at here.