Tip 76: Stake the Boundaries of a Word

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• /\v<{word}><CR>
• We can approximate the meaning of < and > by combining the \w and \W character classes with the \zs and \ze match delimiters.
  • <: \W\zs\w
  • >: \w\ze\W
    • \w matches word characters, including letters, numbers, and the "_" symbol
    • \W matches everything except for word characters.
• In a very magic search, the naked < and > characters are interpreted as word delimiters, but in magic, nomagic, and very nomagic searches we have to escape them.

References:

# If you open the file in vim,
# then you can \"ayy@a the next line to execute the vim command: 
:h /\<

• word delimiters are used automatically each time we trigger the * or # commands.

References:

# If you open the file in vim,
# then you can \"ayy@a the next line to execute the vim command: 
:h *

• g* and g# perform the same searches without word delimiters.

Use Parentheses Without Capturing Their Contents

Example:

/\v(And|D)rew Neil

/\v%(And|D)rew Neil

replace all occurrences of FIRSTNAME LASTNAME with LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME

/\v(%(And|D)rew) (Neil)
:%s//\2, \1/g