i'm not sure how i could have phrased the title better, but my issue is that the highlight function doesn't highlight the search keywords which are at the end of the word. for example, if the search keyword is 'self', it will highlight 'self' or 'self-lessness' or 'Self' [with capital S] but it will not highlight the self of 'yourself' or 'himself' etc. .

this is my highlight function:

function highlightWords($text, $words) {
    preg_match_all('~\w+~', $words, $m);
    if(!$m)
        return $text;
    $re = '~\\b(' . implode('|', $m[0]) . ')~i';
    $string = preg_replace($re, '<span class="highlight">$0</span>', $text);

    return $string;
}