11.7 Extended Regular Expressions

Of all the clones, vim provides the richest set of regular expression matching facilities. Much of the descriptive text in the list below is borrowed from the vim documentation:

\|

Indicates alternation, house\|home.

\+

Matches one or more of the preceding regular expression.

\=

Matches zero or one of the preceding regular expression.

\{n,m}

Matches n to m of the preceding regular expression, as much as possible. n and m are numbers between 0 and 32000; vim requires only the left brace to be preceded by a backslash, not the right brace.

\{n}

Matches n of the preceding regular expression.

\{n,}

Matches at least n of the preceding regular expression, as much as possible.

\{,m}

Matches 0 to m of the preceding regular expression, as much as possible.

\{}

Matches 0 or more of the preceding regular expression, as much as possible (same as *).

\{-n,m}

Matches n to m of the preceding regular expression, as few as possible.

\{-n}

Matches n of the preceding regular expression.

\{-n,}

Matches at least n of the preceding regular expression, as few as possible.

\{-,m}

Matches 0 to m of the preceding regular expression, as few as possible.

\i

Matches any identifier character, as defined by the isident option.

\I

Like \i, but excluding digits.

\k

Matches any keyword character, as defined by the iskeyword option.

\K

Like \k, but excluding digits.

\f

Matches any filename character, as defined by the isfname option.

\F

Like \f, but excluding digits.

\p

Matches any printable character, as defined by the isprint option.

\P

Like \p, but excluding digits.

\s

Matches a whitespace character (exactly space and tab).

\S

Matches anything that isn't a space or a tab.

\b

Backspace.

\e

Escape.

\r

Carriage return.

\t

Tab.

\n

Reserved for future use. Eventually, it will be used for matching multi-line patterns. See the vim documentation for more details.

~

Matches the last given substitute (i.e., replacement) string.

\(...\)

Provides grouping for *, \+, and \=, as well as making matched sub-texts available in the replacement part of a substitute command (\1, \2, etc.).

\1

Matches the same string that was matched by the first sub-expression in \( and \). For example: \([a-z]\).\1 matches ata, ehe, tot, etc. \2, \3, and so on may be used to represent the second, third, and so forth subexpressions.

The isident, iskeyword, isfname, and isprint options define the characters that appear in identifiers, keywords, and filenames, and that are printable. Use of these options makes regular expression matching very flexible.