Rearrange c++ const and reference specifiers

Question

I'm trying to convert

const std::string &s

to

std::string const & s

and can't seem to get it quite right. This is the regex I'm using:

%s/const \(.\{-}\) &/\1 const &

and the result I'm getting:

std::string const const std::string &s

Answer 1

Just escape the & with a backslash.

%s/const \(.\{-}\) &/\1 const \&

The & in the replace part inserts the entire matched pattern.

See :help s/\&.