vim regex with meta-characters

Question

I have the following in a text file:

This is some text for cv_1 for example
This is some text for cv_001 for example
This is some text for cv_15 for example

I am trying to use regex cv_.*?\s to match cv_1, cv_001, cv_15 in the text. I know that the regex works. However, it doesn't match anything when I try it in Vim.

Do we need to do something special in Vim?

Answer 1

vim's regex syntax is a little different -- what you're looking for is

cv_.\{-}\s

(the \{-} being the vim equivalent of perl's *?, i.e., non-greedy 0-or-more). See here for a good tutorial on vim's regular expressions.

Answer 2

The non-greedy character ? doesn't work in Vim; you should use:

cv_.\{-}\s

...instead of:

cv_.*?\s

Here's a quick reference for matching:

     * (0 or more) greedy matching
    \+ (1 or more) greedy matching
  \{-} (0 or more) non-greedy matching
\{-n,} (at least n) non-greedy matching