Question

How do I prevent javascript from replacing sections of words that match a string I’m trying to replace?
Here’s an example of what It’s doing:

function replaceApple(){
var aString = "apple app";
var replacing = "app";
return aString.replace(new RegExp(replacing, 'gi'),"cool");
}

result:

coolle cool

How can I make it so that it doesn’t mess with whole words? So that the result is:

apple cool

is there a fix for this or does one have to build a function that will loop through each word?

Answer 1

str = 'apple app';
replace = 'app';
str = str.replace(new RegExp('\\b' + replace + '\\b', 'gi'), ' is a fruit ');

Result

apple is a fruit

Play with it on jsFiddle