re

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> Whitespace is actually \s. But [\s]disc[whatever]
> doesn't do the job - then it won't match "(disc)",
> which counts as "disc appearing as a full word.

Ok, then this works:

import re

test = """
disc
(disc)
foo disc bar
discuss
""".split("\n")

for t in test:
     if re.search(r"(^|[^\w])(disc)($|[^\w])", t):
         print "success:", t


> Also I think you have ^ and $ backwards, and there's
> a ^ I don't understand. I _think_ that a correct version

Yep, sorry for the confusion.

Diez