regex to match letter+number as a seperate word (javascript)

Question

I have the following regexp:

• (a|b|c|d|k)\\s?-?\\d{1,2}

https://regex101.com/r/r82AyN/2/

It is more or less correct. It should match: letter a,b,c,d or k with one or two numbers . Examples are:

• a1
• k12
• a-2
• a1. // should match
• a1 test // should match

But the problem is that it should match only those items that are as separate word, but not within a word. For instance, it should not match these:

• abolsa1
• a1slikti
• abolsa 124
• abols a12ab
• vērtība 428

Answer 1

您可以使用\\b来检测单词边界：

\b(a|b|c|d|k)\s?-?\d{1,2}\b

Answer 2

Use \\b to match word boundaries!

\b(a|b|c|d|k)\s?-?\d{1,2}\b

I basically added \\b at the end and start of your original regex. This means that the start and end must be a word boundary.

You can think of a word boundary as

(?<=\w)(?=\W)|(?<=\W)(?=\w)

Demo

Answer 3

Wrap your regex in \\b , that will mean a word boundary at the beginning and the end.

Also, use a character class instead of the group, it is much more efficient:

\b[abcdk]\s?-?\d{1,2}\b

Try it online here .

Answer 4

Other answers are great here. Thought I'd add mine which is slightly different but uses the word boundary \\b concept too

\\b[abcdk]-?\\d{1,2}\\b

Demo