How to use matchadd to add exact word?

Question

Referring to answer from this link..

Adding two groups,

:highlight MyGroup1 ctermbg=green guibg=green
:highlight MyGroup2 ctermbg=blue guibg=blue

Then adding two words foo and bar into specific groups.

:call matchadd("MyGroup1", "foo")
:call matchadd("MyGroup2", "bar")

But how to make sure that the exact words foo is highlighted and not some conjunction word bigwordwithfoo.

Answer 1

Use the \< and \> anchors around your pattern, to match word boundaries before and after your words.

:call matchadd("MyGroup1", '\<foo\>')
:call matchadd("MyGroup2", '\<bar\>')

You need single quotes, to prevent Vim from using \ as an escape character.

See also:

• :help /\<
• :help matchadd() for details on how pattern is used and matched.
• :help literal-string for how single quoted strings don't interpret backslashes as escape characters.