php - Check if a string contain multiple specific words

Question

How to check, if a string contain multiple specific words?

I can check single words using following code:

$data = "text text text text text text text bad text text naughty";
if (strpos($data, 'bad') !== false) {
    echo 'true';
}

But, I want to add more words to check. Something like this:

$data = "text text text text text text text bad text text naughty";
if (strpos($data, 'bad || naughty') !== false) {
    echo 'true';
}

(if any of these words is found then it should return true)

But, above code does not work correctly. Any idea, what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

For this, you will need Regular Expressions and the preg_match function.

Something like:

if(preg_match('(bad|naughty)', $data) === 1) { } 

The reason your attempt didn't work

Regular Expressions are parsed by the PHP regex engine. The problem with your syntax is that you used the || operator. This is not a regex operator, so it is counted as part of the string.

As correctly stated above, if it's counted as part of the string you're looking to match: 'bad || naughty' as a string, rather than an expression!