Hi everyone,

How can I create alternatives from a list of strings to be used as a string pattern in StringPosition. For example, if my function is fed

{"cat","dog","bird}

I want

"cat" | "dog" | "bird"

But if my list has only two strings in it

{"cat","dog"}

I want

"cat" | "dog"

In other words, I want to be able to generate alternatives from a list of unknown length.

I guess a related question is, What is the difference between using

StringPosition[myText,"cat"|"dog"~~WordBoundary]

and

StringPosition[myText,{"cat","dog"}~~WordBoundary]

because both seems to work the same in my tests?

Regards,

Gregory