In Vim, how do you search for a word boundary character, like the \b in regexp?

Question

I'd like to be able to search

/the\b

to find "the" but not "then".

I also tried searching with very magic turned on:

/\vthe\b

score 200 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 06 '22 at 23:02

200

/the\>

I assume "regexp" means PCRE. It is worth noting that Vim's regex syntax differs from (and apparently predates) PCRE.

See also:

edited Jun 06 '22 at 23:02

Cristian Ciupitu

answered Dec 06 '11 at 17:50

Adam Monsen

4

why wouldn't \b work? vim doesn't conform to regex? – Kwolf May 10 '17 at 16:59
9

I'm assuming you mean Perl Compatible Regular Expressions. Vim's regex syntax predates PCRE. I added links to related questions. – Adam Monsen May 12 '17 at 04:04
"regexp" does not mean PCRE. It is simply a synonym to "regex". – henrebotha May 03 '18 at 12:33

score 103 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 30 '17 at 10:48

103

Use \< and \> for word start and word end, respectively.

E.g. In your specific case you would use:

/the\>/

edited Nov 30 '17 at 10:48

einpoklum

answered Dec 06 '11 at 17:50

Luke Girvin

The reason I always forget this and always have to come back to this page is because I forget that it is a BACKSLASH, because you are inserting a special character: a word boundary. I tend to type a forward slash because I am used to that as an escape sequence, then I can't figure out why it's not working. Hopefully this will help someone with the same problem. – felwithe Apr 28 '23 at 16:55

score 44 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 26 '16 at 18:35

44

If very magic is turned on, then you shouldn't escape the > character. See what's magic search. SO in your case you'd do:

/\v<the>

it would search for only the word 'the'.

edited Dec 26 '16 at 18:35

answered Nov 05 '12 at 04:10

Rocky · Answer 4 · 2012-01-02T13:50:23.973

18

if you are trying to search a word at your cursor. you can just hit *, or # for backward search.

edited Jan 02 '12 at 13:50

answered Dec 07 '11 at 07:21

Rocky

This unfortunately ignores the sigil. (If you use it on $var, it will match "var", not "$var"). I understand why-- $ is not a word character. But looking for precise variable names is one of the most common reasons I search. – felwithe Nov 26 '21 at 18:25

4 Answers4