How to Perform Whole Word Matching in JavaScript Using Regular Expressions?

Whole Word Matching in JavaScript

When searching for specific words in a text, it's often necessary to ensure that the match encompasses the entire word rather than just part of it. This is achieved by using a regular expression that employs the "b" boundary metacharacter.

In JavaScript, the "b" metacharacter represents a word boundary, which essentially means the beginning or end of a word. By specifying "b" on either side of the search term, the regular expression will only match instances where the term appears as a distinct whole word, excluding partial or partial matches.

For example, to search for the word "me" in a text, you would use the following regular expression:

/\bme\b/

This expression would find all occurrences of "me" in the text, but not "memmm" or "someme".

Resolving the Given Issue

In the provided code, there are a couple of issues that prevent the regular expression from working as intended:

1. Incorrect Comparison: The comparison is using the test method on a number (2) instead of a string, which is causing false negatives.
2. Lookup Substitution: The lookup variable should be incorporated into the regular expression dynamically to make the search dynamic.

To resolve these issues, the updated code would be:

new RegExp("\b" + lookup + "\b").test(textbox.value)

This expression creates a dynamic regular expression by concatenating the "b" metacharacters with the value of the lookup variable. It then tests this expression against the value of the textbox, ensuring that the match finds whole words that match the specified lookup value.

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