I need to check if there is a phrase or a word within a certain string. However, the word can't be within another word. For example, if the string is "Hi, how are you? This is really cool, by the way." If I'm looking for the word "hi", it should only show up once- the one inside the "this" shouldn't be counted. The "how are you" should also be counted since that is a phrase I'm looking for. Below is my code. Essentially, I have an array of arrays with phrases that I'm looking for. I have a = because if the string says "Hi, how are you?" for example, I want to respond to both the "hi" and "how are you." I think I might have to use regular expressions, but I'm not really sure how I would go about doing so. Any guidance would be much appreciated. Thank you so much!

for(let a = 0; a < userquestions.length; a  ) {
    for (let b = 0; b < userquestions[a].length; b  ) {
        if(usermessage.includes(userquestions[a][b])) {
            responsemessage  = chatbotresponses[a][Math.floor(Math.random() * chatbotresponses[a].length)];
        }
    }
}

CodePudding user response：

You should use regex, indeed.

Try this:

function escapeRegExp(string) {
    return string.replace(/([.* ?^=!:${}()|[]\/\])/g, "\\$1");
}

function searchWholeWord(wholeWord, hostString)
{
    var regex = '\\b';
    regex  = escapeRegExp(wholeWord);
    regex  = '\\b';
    var result = new RegExp(regex, 'i').test(hostString);
    return result
}

found = searchWholeWord("hi", "Hi, how are you? This is really cool, by the way.");
alert(found);
//returns true

found = searchWholeWord("hi", "This is really cool, by the way.");
alert(found);
//returns false

http://jsfiddle.net/Ydr3R/

Based on this post: Search for a whole word in a string