Table of Contents Tip 76: Stake the Boundaries of a Word References: References: Use Parentheses Without Capturing Their Contents

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• `/\v<{word}>`
• 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.

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

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

Example:

replace all occurrences of FIRSTNAME LASTNAME with LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME