regular expression whole word replace, whitespace only

Question

Some modes treat underscores as word boundaries.

I am using evil via spacemacs. I am trying to use a vim/sed style :%s/foo/bar/g search and replace, but operate only on whitespace delimited words, not underscores.

As an example, if I have the following:

num_foos_
foos_

and I want to rename only foos_ to bars_.

I have tried the following:

• :%s/foos_/bars_/g : matches both num_foos_ and foos_
• :%s/\bfoos_/bars_/g : matches both num_foos_ and foos_ (I guess because _ is a word boundary, so \b matches num_foos_)
• :%s/\bfoos_\b/bars_/g : matches neither (I guess because _ is a word boundary, and there is no word after the trailing _)
• :%s/\<foos_/bars_/g : matches both num_foos_ and foos_ (I guess for the same reasons as \b)

How can I match only foos_ and not num_foos_?

Answer 1

The required syntax is %s/\_<foos_\_>/bars_/g

As mentioned in this SO answer:

The regexp \<foo\> or \bfoo\b matches foo only when it's not preceded or followed by a word constituent character (syntax code w, usually alphanumerics, so it matches in foo_bar but not in foo1).

Since Emacs 22, the regexp \_<foo_bar\_> matches foo_bar only when it's not preceded or followed by a symbol constituent character. A symbol constituent is either a word constituent or a character with syntax _. Most programming mode define _ to be a symbol constituent.