正则表达式匹配多个单词的变体

Question

I have stored my value in a variable:

var myvalue = "hello bye";
var myText = "hellobye is here and hello-bye here and hello.bye"

how can I check if the variations of myvalue appears in the text?
i am using this pattern:

hello[-. ]*?bye

but i can't break my variable value like this. One more thing, what if my value contains more than two elements? like hello bye hi

Answer 1

You may replace all whitespace chunks (match them with a mere /\\s+/g ) with [-.\\\\s]*? to create a regex to match the variations of myvalue :

 var myvalue = "hello bye"; var myText = "hellobye is here and hello-bye here and hello.bye" console.log(myText.match(new RegExp(myvalue.replace(/\\s+/g, '[-.\\\\s]*?'), 'g'))); 

Answer 2

I think something like this is what you are after. If you want an explanation, leave a comment and I will do my best.

var myvalue = "hello bye";
var searchReg = new RegExp('(' + myvalue.replace(/ /g, ')[-. ]*?(') + ')', 'g');
console.log(searchReg.source);
//-> (hello)[-. ]*?(bye)
var myText = "hellobye is here and hello-bye here and hello.bye";

console.log(myText.replace(searchReg, '$1^^^^^$2'));
// -> hello^^^^^bye is here and hello^^^^^bye here and hello^^^^^bye

If you don't need back references, it's a little easier to read:

var searchReg = new RegExp(myvalue.replace(/ /g, '[-. ]*?'), 'g');