Help with \s and variables in preg_match

[future_man]

I am working on a function to match strings in an array as individual words in the passed in array.

foreach ($word_array as $word) {
    $pattern = '/\s'.$word.'\s/';
    if (preg_match($pattern, $value)) {                

        $match = 1;
        break;
    }
}

The problem is that I need to pass a string into this function's foreach to create the regex pattern to match on.

I thought it could be done by setting a var outside the loop, but when I output the value of $pattern in the error_log it shows as "/\sXXX\s/", and not matching when it should.

Does anyone know why it is adding the extra backslash is being added before the \s and how to handle this?

Thanks!

[sneakyimp]

If you are getting your text from user input by a form submission, it is likely that your PHP server is configured to add 'magic quotes':
http://us2.php.net/magic_quotes

[Weedpacket]

FYI, I'd recommend using \b instead of \s. "/\sFYI\s/" won't find any of the occurrences of "FYI" in this post. "/\bFYI\b/" would at least find the first and third.

[future_man]

Thanks everyone. That is helpful.

John