php - Match exact word with any character regex -

how match exact word contains special character ?

$string = 'fall in love #pepsimoji! celebrate #worldemojiday downloading our keyboard @ http://bit.ly/pepsikb & take text game notch. - teacher';  preg_match("/\b#worldemojiday\b/i",$string); //false 

i want match exact word containing character. if want match word 'download' in string, should return false

preg_match("/\bdownload\b/i",$string); //false 

but when search downloading, should return true.

thanks

the problem \b word boundary before # non-word character. \b cannot match position between 2 non-word (or between 2 word) characters, thus, not match.

a solution either remove first \b, or use \b (a non-word boundary matching between 2 word or 2 non-word characters) instead of it.

\b#worldemojiday\b 

or

#worldemojiday\b 

see demo (or this one)

note \b matches @ beginning of string.

here a way build regex dynamically, adding word boundaries necessary:

$srch = "žvolen"; $srch = preg_quote($srch); if (preg_match('/\w$/u', $srch)) {     $srch .= '\\b';    }  if (preg_match('/^\w/u', $srch)) {     $srch = '\\b' . $srch; } echo preg_match("/" . $srch . "/ui", "žvolen used.");