Regex.Match whole words

Question

In C#, I want to use a regular expression to match any of these words:

string keywords = \"(shoes|shirt|pants)\";

I want to fi

Answer 1

You should add the word delimiter to your regex:

\b(shoes|shirt|pants)\b

In code:

Regex.Match(content, @"\b(shoes|shirt|pants)\b");

Answer 2

Try

Regex.Match(content, @"\b" + keywords + @"\b", RegexOptions.Singleline | RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)

\b matches on word boundaries. See here for more details.

Answer 3

You need a zero-width assertion on either side that the characters before or after the word are not part of the word:

(?=(\W|^))(shoes|shirt|pants)(?!(\W|$))

As others suggested, I think \b will work instead of (?=(\W|^)) and (?!(\W|$)) even when the word is at the beginning or end of the input string, but I'm not sure.

Answer 4

put a word boundary on it using the \b metasequence.