How to check if a word is present in a sentence using Java? [duplicate]

Question

I am new to programming and working on a function to return true if a word is present in a sentence. I tried the indexOf() method, but then I also came across a certain issue with this approach:

Suppose my sentence is I am a, Java Programmer.

If we look for the word ram with the indexOf() method then it will return true because ram is present in Programmer while the correct output should be false as ram is not present as a word but as a pattern.

How can I work around this problem? The code that I am using as of now is:

boolean isPresent(String word, String sentence)
{
    if(sentence.indexOf(word) >= 0)
        return true;
    else
        return false;
}

NOTE: The word ram is just an example to show one of the issue with my current approach.It's not that I have to work with ram only all the time.The word can be any like say a which is followed by a comma in above sentence.

UPDATE: Thanks everyone for providing their comments and solutions. I have selected one as an accepted answer(would have selected more if permitted :-)), but a lot were helpful.

Answer 1

try regex

boolean contains = s.matches(".*\\bram\\b.*");

\b means word boundary

Answer 2

Since you want to search a word there are three cases:

1. word at start of sentence means no space at start but space at end.
2. word between the sentence space at both ends.
3. word at end only space at end.

To cover all the three cases, one possible solution is:

String str = "I am a JAVA programmer";
String[] splited = str.split("\\b+"); //split on word boundries
Arrays.asList(splited).contains("ram"); //search array for word

Here is working Demo