Regex match words
This regular expression can be used to validate that a given string contains only characters in it or extract two words from a given string.
Simple word match
The regular expression to match only words looks like this (including compound words):
/^\b(?:\w|-)+\b$/
Enter a text in the input above to see the result
Example code in Javascript:
var wordsRegex = /^\b(?:\w|-)+\b$/;
// Validate words
wordsRegex.test('word'); // Returns true
wordsRegex.test('pet-friendly'); // Returns true
wordsRegex.test('not a word'); // Returns false
// Extract words from a string
var wordsRegexG = /\b(?:\w|-)+\b/g;
'Hello, world!'.match(wordsRegexG); // returns ['Hello', 'world']
