Are there potential pitfalls in using substr_count() to search for a word in a text compared to other PHP functions like strpos()?

Using substr_count() to search for a word in a text may return inaccurate results if the word appears as part of another word. For example, searching for "cat" using substr_count() in the text "cattle" would return 1, even though "cat" is not present as a standalone word. To avoid this issue, it is better to use strpos() to find the exact position of the word in the text. 

$text = "The quick brown cat jumps over the lazy dog";
$word = "cat";

if(strpos($text, $word) !== false){
    echo "The word '$word' was found in the text.";
} else {
    echo "The word '$word' was not found in the text.";
}

Keywords

substr_count strpos PHP functions text search pitfalls

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