正则表达式：如何匹配两个精确指定的4位数字之一

Question

I am looking at a large file in vim that has a whole lot of numbers in it. I am looking for a specific record that has the number 1119 in one field, and I know 2 records later there is a number 1196 in the same field.

I would like to search for either but have both highlighted,

I have tried:

[1119|1196] which matches any of these single digits like 1.
{1119|1196} doesn't find anything (I am not sure what it looks for).
{1119,1196}

doesn't find anything either. I am surprised at this, as I think it should look for either 1119 or 1196, and those numbers definitly exist lots of times in the file.

I have also tried putting /g for global at the end, but that did not help either.

I also tried

(1119|1196), and that did not work either.

I also tried

((1119)|(1196)) and that did not work either.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

See VimRegex.com :

4.6 Alternations
Using \\| you can combine several expressions into one which matches any of its components. The first one matched will be used.

\\(Date:\\|Subject:\\|From:\\)\\(\\s.*\\)

So, you need to escape special characters:

\(1119\|1196\)

Since the grouping here is applied to the whole pattern that can be referenced with \\0 ( \\0 -> the whole matched pattern ), you can safely use

1119\|1196

to search for the two numbers.

However, if you need to find the two numbers as whole words, use \\< / \\> word boundaries (then, grouping is fine):

\<\(1119\|1196\)\>