regex - Search for whole words in the Text widget with the search method

Question

I am trying to find a way to match whole words using the Tkinter Text search method, but I have not found a consistent way of doing it. I have tried to set regexp to True and then use word boundaries of the Tcl regular expressions, with y wrapping the word:

pos = text_widget.search('\y' + some_word +'\y', start, regexp=True)

It seems to work, but I think there might exist another way of doing it.

Answer 1

Here is a snippet of code that will allow you to search for any regular expression in the text widget by using the tcl character indexing syntax:

import tkinter
import re

root = tkinter.Tk()

text = tkinter.Text(root)
text.pack()

def findall(pattern, start="1.0", end="end"):
    start = text.index(start)
    end = text.index(end)
    string = text.get(start, end)

    indices = []
    if string:
        last_match_end = "1.0"
        matches = re.finditer(pattern, string)
        for match in matches:
            match_start = text.index("%s+%dc" % (start, match.start()))
            match_end = text.index("%s+%dc" % (start, match.end()))
            indices.append((match_start, match_end))
    print(indices)

    root.after(200, findall, pattern)

root.after(200, findall, r"w+")

However, if you are dependent on the tkinter.Text.search function, I believe the idlelib EditorWindow class uses it to do its syntax highlighting.