使用正则表达式获取包含特定单词的句子

Question

I am trying to find the sentence that contains a specific word. I defined a sentence starting and ending with the following characters : . ! ? . ! ?

var str = "Hello, how is it going. This is the bus we have to take!";
var regex = /[^.?!]*(?:[.?,\s!])(bus)(?=[\s.?!,])[^.?!]*[.?!]/igm;

var result = regex.exec(str);


output : `This is the bus we have to take!`

Now, I have trouble when I try to find the sentence that contains the word hello , as it's starting the sentence. How could I change my regex to include that case? I am not used to regex and it's quite hard to get into it, even with the docs under my eyes!

Answer 1

Remember that splitting text into linguistic sentences is a very specific, difficult task usually performed with the help of NLP packages.

If you want to limit to specific strings that follow your definition of a sentence:

• Split with /[.?!]/ regex
• Check if the entry contains a substring with RegExp#test() since you need a case insensitive check

 var str = "Hello, how is it going. This is the bus we have to take!"; var chunks = str.split(/[.?!]/).filter(function(n) { return /hello/i.test(n); }); console.log(chunks);

Note that to check for a whole word you may use /\\bhello\\b/i or /(?:^|\\s)hello(?!\\S)/i regexps depending on further requirements.