Is there a shortcut for word boundary in `less`?

Question

This is the less I am using:

less 458 (POSIX regular expressions)
Copyright (C) 1984-2012 Mark Nudelman

In Vim it is \\< a

Answer 1

First see if man 7 re_format on your computer has an "Enhanced features" section which lists \< etc. If it does, change one line in less-451/pattern.h:

#define REGCOMP_FLAG  REG_ENHANCED  // not REG_EXTENDED

Then ./configure --with-regex=posix; make less will understand \< .

This works on Macosx 10.8; on other systems, try following /usr/include/regex.h .
(Gnu.org has a round dozen Regular-expression-syntaxes ?! )