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

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

/the\>

See :help /ordinary-atom

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

See also:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3604617/why-does-vim-have-its-own-regex-syntax/3604643#3604643
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3864467/whats-the-difference-between-vim-regex-and-normal-regex
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13998913/within-vims-regex-engine-why-are-some-metacharacters-escaped-and-some-are-not#13999104
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33081331/can-i-make-vim-accept-b-rather-than-just-and/33081758#33081758

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

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

/the>/

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'.

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