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

less generally uses vi syntax, i.e. \< and \> unless it has been compiled with the --with-regex=none configure option or if the regular expression library found at compilation time doesn't provide word boundary search. Your system might also provide a different syntax.