How to find/match whole words where there may be one or more dashes but only inside the word - not on the boundaries?

Correct:

w
wo
w-o
wo-r-d

Not correct/rejected:

-
-w
w-
-word
wo-rd-

I've tried several patterns on https://regex101.com but they all fail

CodePudding user response：

Given only dashes are allowed characters within strings, you can use the following regex:

^[A-Za-z](?:[A-Za-z\-]*[A-Za-z])?(?=\s|$)

Regex Explanation:

• ^: start of string symbol
• [A-Za-z]: a character (enforces word to start with a letter)
• (?:[A-Za-z\-]*[A-Za-z])?: optional combination of other characters and dashes, ensuring that last symbol is a character
• (?=\s|$): a space or end of string symbol (ensures your word has ended)

Check the demo here.

CodePudding user response：

You may use the following pattern:

^(\w|\w[\w-]*?\w)$

The above pattern matches:

• a single word character (\w), OR
• a single word character, followed by as many word or dash characters (the [\w-]*? is greedy), until it reaches the final word character

\w matches any word character (equivalent to [a-zA-Z0-9_]). If you wish to have only letter, use [a-zA-Z] instead.