How to use zero matches in regular expression?

Question

I have following text

_printer
_printer
_printer
_printer
_printer
_printer
_printer
_printer
printer

and I want to find the last one by using a search for the text printer which is not preceded by an underscore character _.

I know that zero matches are !: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pattern.html#/zero-width

so I tried:

/!_printer
/!/_printer
/!\_printer
/![_]printer
/(_)@!printer
/_@!printer
//_@!printer
/\_@!printer

None of them works. What is the correct pattern for this search?

Answer 1

You're using the wrong zero width multi item. \@! is negative look-ahead. You could use it to e.g. find any printer that is not followed by an underscore:

/printer_\@!

The multi item you want to use is negative look-behind \_@<!:

/_\@<!printer

See :help \_@<!

An alternative technique would be to use:

/\_[^_]printer/s+1

Find any character (including an end-of-line) that is not an underscore, followed by printer, and place the cursor one character on from the beginning of the match.