//modified to work with Kotlin 1.0.x private val keywords = arrayOf("foo", "bar", "spam") private val pattern = keywords.joinToString(prefix = "(?i)", separator = "|") private val rx = pattern.toRegex() fun findKeyword(content: String): MutableList { var result = mutableListOf() rx.findAll(content).forEach { result.add(it.value) } return result } fun main(args: Array) { println(findKeyword("Some spam and a lot of bar")); println(arrayOf("foo", "bar", "spam").joinToString(prefix = "(?i)", separator = "|").toRegex()) }