Checking for a word inside a string

Question

I'm looking for a way of detecting wheter or not a certain word is present in a string. For example, if I have the string "hi, this is me" I want to make sure "hi" is present; What I tried so far:

bool containsWord () {
    string str = "hi, this is me";
    return str.Contains ("hi");
}

Does not work properly: the problem with this is that I need to make sure the word itself is present and is not part of another word. With the code as it is, doing:

bool containsWord () {
    string str = "this is me";
    return str.Contains ("hi");
}

would still return true since "hi" is still a substring of "this". How can I avoid that?

[`Regex`](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.text.regularexpressions.regex%28v=vs.110%29.aspx). — Wai Ha Lee, Dec 09 '15 at 14:30

Perfect28 · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-09T15:09:05.127

3

How about using String.Split

 // Add other punctuation if need 
var array = str.Split(" ,;.".ToCharArray(), StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries) ;
bool containsWord = array.Any(s => s.Equals("hi", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase));

edited Dec 09 '15 at 15:09

answered Dec 09 '15 at 14:33

Perfect28

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Thanks, this worked perfectly :) – Lextredis Dec 09 '15 at 14:51

Konstantin Zadiran · Answer 2 · 2015-12-09T14:41:01.453

2

use some regular expressions - Regex.IsMatch(@"\bhi\b");
don't forget to add using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

edited Dec 09 '15 at 14:41

answered Dec 09 '15 at 14:34

Konstantin Zadiran

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Checking for a word inside a string

2 Answers2