Linq Regex for whole word search

Question

I'm unable to find a recent decent answer on this.

Linq does not support regex, and trying to extract a method out does not outsmart the framwork. How do I do a whole work match on a list of sentences in linq.

The reason I need the \\b is because it could be start or end of string, or have a comma, dash, or other similar separators.

    private bool isMatch(string searchText, string text)
    {
        return Regex.IsMatch(searchText, "\\b"+text+"\\b", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Compiled);
    }


        result  p = itemsRep
            .Where(fullText=> isMatch(searchText, fullText))
            .FirstOrDefault();

Answer 1

I think what you're saying is that Linq-to-SQL/Linq-To-Entities does not support Regex in expressions.

Try adding .AsEnumerable() before your .Where() .

The .Where() method will then enumerate over the results of any translated query, rather than try to convert your .Where() expression to SQL.

Like this:

result  p = itemsRep
            .AsEnumerable()
            .Where(fullText => isMatch(searchText, fullText))
            .FirstOrDefault();