Question

What is the best way to search for a word in a string

preg_match("/word/",$string)

stripos("word",$string)

Or is there a better way

Answer 1

One benefit to using regexp for this job is the ability to use \b (Regexp word boundary) in the regexp, and other random derivations. If you are only looking for that sequence of letters in a string stripos is likely to be a little better.

$tests = array("word", "worded", "This also has the word.", "Words are not the same", "Word capitalized should match");
foreach ($tests as $string)
{
  echo "Testing \"$string\": Regexp:";
  echo preg_match("/\bword\b/i", $string) ? "Matched" : "Failed";
  echo " stripos:";
  echo stripos("word", $string) >= 0 ? "Matched": "Failed";
  echo "\n";
}

Results:

Testing "word": Regexp:Matched stripos:Matched
Testing "worded": Regexp:Failed stripos:Matched
Testing "This also has the word.": Regexp:Matched stripos:Matched
Testing "Words are not the same": Regexp:Failed stripos:Matched
Testing "Word capitalized should match": Regexp:Matched stripos:Matched