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Word Boundary

Regular Expressions: Word Boundary

What is a word boundary \b in regular expressions (regexp)?​

View Answer:
Interview Response: A word boundary \b is a test, just like ^ and $. When the regexp engine (program module that implements searching for RegExp) comes across \b, it checks that the position in the string is a word boundary. Three different positions qualify as word boundaries in regular expressions. For instance, if the first string character is a word character \w. Also, between two characters in the string, where one is a word character \w, and the other is not, and at the string end if the last string character is a word character \w. We can use \b not only with words but also with digits.

Code Example:

alert('Hello, Java!'.match(/\bJava\b/)); // Java
alert('Hello, JavaScript!'.match(/\bJava\b/)); // null

// More Examples

alert('Hello, Java!'.match(/\bHello\b/)); // Hello
alert('Hello, Java!'.match(/\bJava\b/)); // Java
alert('Hello, Java!'.match(/\bHell\b/)); // null (no match)
alert('Hello, Java!'.match(/\bJava!\b/)); // null (no match)

// Digit Boundaries
alert('1 23 456 78'.match(/\b\d\d\b/g)); // returns 23,78
alert('12,34,56'.match(/\b\d\d\b/g)); // returns 12,34,56

Does a word boundary work on Non-Latin alphabets?​

View Answer:
Interview Response: The word boundary test \b checks that there should be \w on the one side from the position and "not \w" – on the other side. But \w means a Latin letter a-z (or a digit or an underscore), so the test does not work for other characters, e.g., Cyrillic letters or Hieroglyphs.