Regex to find whole words

Question

How would I find if a whole word, i.e. "EU", exists within the String "I am in the EU.", while not also matching cases like "I am in Europe."?

Basically, I'd like some sort of regex for the word i.e. "EU" with non-alphabetical characters on either side.

Take a look at word boundaries \b – gtgaxiola Sep 25 '12 at 00:53 — gtgaxiola, Sep 25 '12 at 00:53

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 25 '12 at 00:55

.*\bEU\b.*

 public static void main(String[] args) {
       String regex = ".*\\bEU\\b.*";
       String text = "EU is an acronym for  EUROPE";
       //String text = "EULA should not match";


       if(text.matches(regex)) {
           System.out.println("It matches");
       } else {
           System.out.println("Doesn't match");
       }

    }

Reimeus · Answer 2 · 2012-09-25T01:06:52.883

4

You could do something like

String str = "I am in the EU.";
Matcher matcher = Pattern.compile("\\bEU\\b").matcher(str);
if (matcher.find()) {
   System.out.println("Found word EU");
}

edited Sep 25 '12 at 01:06

answered Sep 25 '12 at 00:57

Reimeus

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score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 25 '12 at 00:58

3

Use a pattern with word boundaries:

String str = "I am in the EU.";

if (str.matches(".*\\bEU\\b.*"))
    doSomething();

Take a look at the docs for Pattern.

answered Sep 25 '12 at 00:58

pb2q

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Unfortunately, Java docs don't really tell what a word boundary is. This SO item digs deeper: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1324676/what-is-a-word-boundary-in-regexes – akauppi Oct 25 '17 at 06:00

Regex to find whole words

3 Answers3

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