Strip specific words from string

Question

I want to strip whole words from a string wherever they are inside the string.

I have created an array of forbidden words:

$wordlist = array("or", "and", "where", ...)

Now I strip the words:

foreach($wordlist as $word)
$string = str_replace($word, "", $string);

The problem is that the above code also strips words that contain the forbidden words like "sand" or "more".

Answer 1

I had the same problem and fixed it like this:

$filterWords = ['a','the','for'];
$searchQuery = 'a lovely day';
$queryArray = explode(' ', $searchQuery);
$filteredQuery = array_diff($queryArray, $filterWords);

$filteredQuery will contain ['lovely','day']

Answer 2

For this you can use preg_replace and word boundaries:

$wordlist = array("or", "and", "where");

foreach ($wordlist as &$word) {
    $word = '/\b' . preg_quote($word, '/') . '\b/';
}

$string = preg_replace($wordlist, '', $string);

EDIT: Example.