I'm trying to match parts of a larger block of content and want to only match things at the start of the string or that are preceded by a space and I only want to match things that end at the end of string or are followed by a space. Unfortunately, my regex-fu is a bit too weak to figure this out on my own. Help me Stack Overflow, you are my only hope.

Basically these should all match "the-thing-to-match";

the-thing-to-match blah
blah the-thing-to-match
blah the-thing-to-match blah

I'm trying to match parts of a larger block of content and want to only match things at the start of the string or that are preceded by a space and I only want to match things that end at the end of string or are followed by a space. Unfortunately, my regex-fu is a bit too weak to figure this out on my own. Help me Stack Overflow, you are my only hope.

Basically these should all match "the-thing-to-match";

the-thing-to-match blah
blah the-thing-to-match
blah the-thing-to-match blah

• javascript
• regex

Share Improve this question Follow asked Aug 28, 2010 at 1:35 Stephen BelangerStephen Belanger 6,3611212 gold badges4747 silver badges4949 bronze badges 1

• Check out regular-expressions.info/wordboundaries.html too; it may (or may not) be useful. – polygenelubricants Commented Aug 28, 2010 at 12:35

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 7

/(?:^| )the-thing-to-match(?: |$)/

EDIT: Remove quantifiers.