Mastering Vim

Quantifiers or multis

Each character (be it a literal or a special character) or a range of characters is followed by a quantifier, or a multi in Vim terms.

For example, \w\+ will match one or more word characters, and a\{2,4} will match two to four a characters in succession (such as aaa, for example).

Here is the list of most common quantifiers:

Symbol	Meaning
*	0 or more, greedy
\+	1 or more, greedy
\{-}	0 or more, non-greedy
\? or \=	0 or 1, greedy
\{n,m}	n to m, greedy
\{-n,m}	n to m, non-greedy

The full list of quantifiers is available through :help multi.

You may have encountered two new terms in the table given: greedy and non-greedy. Greedy search refers to trying to match as many characters ...