How to make preg_match to find whole word but not separate hyphen-words?

if (preg_match('#\b'.$rawword.'\b#i',$body)) {

This code finds whole words, but if they are a hyphen word like "ABLE-BODIED" it will find ABLE and BODIED separately. How can modify the expression to accommodate for the dash?

Solution

You can use lookbehind and lookahead operators. This operators looks in behind and after but not match them.

for example use \b(?<!-)xyz(?!-)\b for finding whole words of xyz that doesn't have - before or after.