RegExp regular expression find & replace whole words only

Question

I should preface this by stating that I\'m working with VB6 & RegExp

I\'m attempting to find and substitute whole words, by \"whole words\" I mean a valid match

Answer 1

Use the "word boundary" expression \b.

Perhaps something as simple as this will do:

(.*)\bFoo\b(.*)

FYI, the word boundary expression \b is a zero-width match between a word character \w and a non-word character [^\w] or visa versa, and consumes no input.

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Underscore and digit characters are considered "word characters", so Foo_Bar, Bar_Foo, and Foo123 wouldn't match. To rectify that, so that any non-letter is considered "end of word" (including start and end of input), use look arounds:

(?i)(.*(?<![^a-z]))Foo((?![^a-z]).*)