Vim: regex to match words inside angle brackets?

Question

I want to match words inside angle brackets (html tags):

<MatchedWord></MartchedWord>

This is what I have so far:

/\v\<\w+\>

The problem is that it matches the <> too and the /.

How to do it so it only matches the word?

Those are angle brackets, not square brackets! These are square brackets: `[]` — Devon Parsons, Feb 19 '15 at 14:15

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 19 '15 at 14:21

5

You can assert matching before and after text without including that in the match via Vim's special \zs (match start) and \ze (match end) atoms:

/<\/\?\zs\w\+\ze\/\?>

I've included an optional (\?) slash on both side (e.g. </this> and <this/>. Also note that \w\+ isn't a completely correct expression for XML or HTML tags (but it can be a good-enough approximation, depending on your data).

Alternative

For most other regular expression engines, you need to use lookbehind and lookahead to achieve this. Vim has those, too (\@<= and \@=), but the syntax is more awkward, and the matching performance may be poorer.

answered Feb 19 '15 at 14:21

Ingo Karkat

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that seems to match all `<`'s – mgamba Feb 19 '15 at 14:23
I haven't used Vim for RegEx, how are capturing groups handled. My solution would be the simplest using capturing groups – Jeanno Feb 19 '15 at 14:26
@mgamba: If you type this, the `/` need to be escaped; I've added that! – Ingo Karkat Feb 19 '15 at 14:27
@Jeanno: Capturing groups are for _replacement_ (with `:substitute`); they don't help with pure searching. – Ingo Karkat Feb 19 '15 at 14:28

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 19 '15 at 14:20

2

You dont need to escape angle brackets (square brackets are []) since they are not special characters. You can use capturing groups

<\/?(.+)>

answered Feb 19 '15 at 14:20

Jeanno

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score 1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

1

In a non-vim environment, this is achieved using positive lookbehind and lookahead as such:

/(?<=<).*?(?=>)/

This matches the following:

<test>         // test
</content>     // /content
<div id="box"> // div id="box"
<div id="lt>"> // div id="lt

So as you can see by the final example it's not perfect, but you are using regex on html so you get what you pay for

See the regex in action

edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

Community

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answered Feb 19 '15 at 14:28

Devon Parsons

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Obviously the OP is asking specifically for VIM, this answer is included for future readers. – Devon Parsons Feb 19 '15 at 14:28
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Vim also has positive lookbehind and lookahead: `\(<\)\@<=.*\(>\)\@=` – Ben Feb 19 '15 at 14:53
@Ben I know that Vim has lookahead and lookbehind, this answer is not about Vim – Devon Parsons Apr 15 '15 at 17:45

Vim: regex to match words inside angle brackets?

3 Answers3

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