Regex: Specify "space or start of string" and "space or end of string"

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Imagine you are trying to pattern match "stackoverflow".

You want the following:

 this is stackoverflow and it rocks [MATCH]

 stackoverflow is the best [MATCH]

 i love stackoverflow [MATCH]

 typostackoverflow rules [NO MATCH]

 i love stackoverflowtypo [NO MATCH]

I know how to parse out stackoverflow if it has spaces on both sites using:

/\s(stackoverflow)\s/

Same with if its at the start or end of a string:

/^(stackoverflow)\s/

/\s(stackoverflow)$/

But how do you specify "space or end of string" and "space or start of string" using a regular expression?

4 Answers
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